The padlock gave way in front of the paper clip that was rummaging through its entrails. Typed paper sheets came out of a file. He pushed her away and pulled firmly on the drawer. Hands and voices trembled. Mismatch, underaged, divorce, child support. Come on, close it quickly, the frightened little girl whispered to her brother. If he catches us, he'll hand us over to the police, she said. They locked up again, and in their bruised innocence, the two children rejoiced that somewhere in this world another little girl with the same blood like theirs had escaped from hell.
(Translated by Alina-Mihaela Burciu / 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 Ficțiuni Reale. 
