On the electronic screen in the cockpit that I am is shown the outside temperature: 40
oC. I press a
push-button, I turn off all the circuits and I get out with difficulty, as if I am carrying the whole Earth on my shoulders. The hot air hits me and I feel how my brain is liquefying. I touch with my foot some quartz powder that's almost glowing. My whole body is melting. From nowhere to be seen, a hand reaches me and gives me a golden liquid, in a steaming bottle. I drink it with my eyes closed, wanting to extinguish all the thirst in the world. I came back to life. My brain is new. Vacation mood: ON.
(Translated by Beatrice-Ioana Huruială / 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. 
