The ringer joyfully swung on the 10 o'clock rope, he has eaten nine handfuls of sherry cherries. Eek, he hit his forehead, I rang the bell five times as for a funeral, who did I kill? A wail echoed through the village. He pulled three times on the middle rope and three houses caught on fire. The priest came outside in his drawers and whacked the little bell seven times for high waters and eight times for a celebration. The fire went out, the deceased was resurrected and bought drinks for the entire village. In the ditch, the bell ringer raised his fist to the sky: well, did ya show off already?
(Translated by Daniela-Andreea Gugescu / 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 July 2021, the group has 6.800 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. 
