(The gold fish) Tell me, boy, what does your heart long for? To be young? To have money? Beautiful women? Dear little fish, I would like a beer. But not any beer, but a beer with my
pop-pop, 'cause he liked to drink so much, now we could tell tales over a drink. Then a rice pudding, but with my granma, so I could tell her I'm sorry I didn't realize life was so short and I kept delaying to see her, I thought she was immortal. The last one, an ice cream with a freckled kid so I could tell him everything and hold him in my arms.
(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. 
