When my mother had me, the doctors pulled at me so fiercely (it seemed that I did not really want to be born) that they sprained one of my hips. They told my mother to mind her business, that I was alright. But my mother took me to Bucharest, and, in Bucharest, they put my legs in plaster cast, so I would not limp my whole life. I stayed like that for a year and I did not end up limping. Only when I lie naked, I see the bone of my left hip more prominent. But perhaps something still is limping about me, because I hobble in life and I keep losing my balance.
(Translated by Alexandra Handrea / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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 September 2021, the group has 7.150 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. 
