I've just retired. I sit on the bench in front of the block and keep my eyes on the front door. It's incredible how much you can find out. What do you mean what? That inspector on the 5
th floor always comes in with 2 full bags. It's a shame I can't see through them. That woman's daughter on the 1
st floor surely smokes and hides it from her mother. I don't know much about who lives on the 3
rd floor. Newlyweds. I keep seeing a blonde woman coming over, I believe at his place, when he's alone. I don't know how to find out. Hello, yes, sweetheart, I can't come look after my granddaughter. You know I don't have the patience. When she gets older.
(Translated by Lenuţa Bejenaru / 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 August 2021, the group has 7.000 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. 
