My God, it's kitsch, the man shouts from the bottom of his heart, with his fingers clasped on the iron bars of the Gates of Heaven, pulling out the last syllables from the roots of the soles of his feet. This life is kitsch, a bad copy of what could have been. Where is the joy of living, where is the rush of color, where is the ringing of the passage of moments? Give us a white sheet and we will know what to do with it. Saint Peter made a small gesture and the cherub unclasped the man's fingers off the cold iron, whispering: finish your draft.
(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. 
