As Casanova, Münchausen and Machiavelli all lived in his person, he took Tibetan tiger ginseng and Mandalay broom daily. He gorged himself on vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, antioxidants, with illusions of youth. I met him on the street, we greeted each other, his skin and breath were smelling stale of expired chemicals. His eyes were glistering, a hot babe was just passing by. He hurried after her, popping a small pill into his mouth that emitted a minty aroma. Yes,
tic-tacs helps the magic, but from his watch it ticked of old age.
(Translated by Bianca-Maria Marinescu / 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. 
