The dairy factory was preparing for the comrade's visit when Nuți, the cleaning lady, was caught with a stolen stick of butter in the pocket of her dress. We must have an interrogation; the director was yelling. Such a fool, trying to steal when the factory is crawling with the likes of them? Petite and skinny, the woman looked at him, smiling. I am Securitate Colonel Ileana Popescu, said she, silencing him. I didn't steal, I tested the vigilance of those in charge of protecting the nation's goods. On her way home, Nuți was laughing up her sleeve, stroking the stick of butter in her pocket: That moron was scared shitless and didn't check anymore.
(Translated by Ana Stănilă / 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. 
