I'm sitting on a bench in a park. A little girl approaches me and gives me candy. Auntie, why are you crying? I'm not crying I have something in my eyes. Auntie, what do you want to be when you grow up? I don't know, I really don't know, go to your mother. Auntie, when does Santa Claus come? In winter. I'm begging you tell him to come today? Why? Do you want a beautiful gift? I don't want anything. I only want to watch cartoons and I'm not allowed to, 'cause I'm being punished. My dad says that I can only watch cartoons when Santa Claus comes. Auntie, when does winter come?
(Translated by Iuliana Boruga Danciu / 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. 
