I found out why the pantry door has a doorknob on the inside too. When I get in there, I feel free. No one demands anything from me. I breathe through the air vent, eat jam and make rolls. I fold the coins into paper and think of all the little things in my life, how they sit on top of each other like coins in a piggy bank. Another roll of coins worth 100 ron. Today I realized I have enough money to refurbish the kitchen, so I decided to break through this pantry wall and get out.
(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. 
