He recognized him through the visor grille. He had put the sword in his hand and had taught him how to wield it. He would have wanted that the battle in the arena hadn't finished and it hadn't been a loser, but the other's youth and strength struck him down. The young man kneeled on his chest and held the steel to his throat. Then he discovered who he was. Dad. Kill me, you have one in a million chance to be spared by the Roman; he shifted his eyes to the loge of the province's leader. The young man slit his throat, then he plunged the sword in his already bleeding heart.
(Translated by Camelia Diaconu / 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. 
