We leave in 10, I roar, fighting with the baby and the aerosol mask. I don't have the ruler, two feet pop up on the ladder. Where did you see it last? In the pencilcase. I don't have the pencilcase, he screams from upstairs. I hope you're joking, I say through gritted teeth, I'm calm, I'm breathing. It's on the floor, where the homework is. He comes downstairs agitated, I'm going to the construction site, we've got flooding, I don't know what they've done, bam, the door. Who's taking the kids, I shout, echo. From my arms, I hear the fart. Diarrhea, check, yes. And hot forehead. Ade, give me the phone. Hi, I have to cancel my appointments. Yeah. Again. I know, third time.
(Translated by Andreea Grinţescu / 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. 
