The old archivist flinched. The bell had rung. He sighed and slowly headed for the door. He opened it, he leaned with difficulty to get the package in the doorway. He returned inside. He sat at the table, he pulled his glasses and arranged them on the top of his nose. Slowly, he opened the package. Inside, four boxes and a piece of paper. Three boxes contained film rolls. Two were big, one was small. In the last box, there was a black and white photograph. He read the paper with watery eyes and then took the package to the library while mumbling to himself. Family. Car crash, three films, an ultrasound.
(Translated by Ana-Maria Denisa Neagu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In June 2021, the group has 6.650 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, Răzvan Penescu, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficţiuni Reale. 
