This is not satire. On a summer day, at 7pm, I, 16 years old, was on my way to the subway, wearing a knee length skirt and a baggy
T-shirt. He, 30ish years old, regular, walking in the opposite direction, shoots me a "hello" while I pass by him. I ignore him, looking straight ahead. He turns around, walking next to me: since you gave me the
cold-shoulder, I'm gonna follow you home. Fight or flight? Both: I'll go to my dad's work, police station 16. I descend the subway stairs, he grabs my hand, puts his on my breasts, spits me, slaps me and runs. Bitch.
(Translated by Ioana Diana Sandu / 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. 
