When Mitică told me he was going to take me to the beach, I ran into the yard and started dancing among the chickens. I took the suitcase out of the attic, wiped the dust off of it and started packing my bags. My mother adjusted a couple of dresses for me, one was lent to me by neighbor Veta. I packed a starched cotton bedsheet for the beach and I bought my first swimsuit from the village cooperative. At night I only dreamt of shells and dolphins. Mitică didn't take me to the beach. But that's okay, maybe he'll take me next year. My luggage is already packed anyway.
(Translated by Diana Paşcanu / 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. 
