That's how it is when you're God's athlete, you get
muscle-bound until you reach him. Why? One day the village's priest told me to go up and rig up the cross bought at the flea market. He had found a golden splendor with trinkets, with diamonds, with Jesus naked, but clothed in a phosphorescent skin that shines in the darkness, a beauty of cheap brass. I work up the nerve, climb, tied up with Lișman ropes, a greedy ox who, upon seeing the apple, abandoned the ropes and went to eat. This is the only thing I've heard from the priest's mouth after seeing the apple: Watch out for the kitsch.
(Translated by Claudia Alexandra Văcărescu / 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. 
