Are you ready to die? Do you spend all of your life preparing for death? This is what the woman holding vigil at her mother's side was asking herself. She had lost track of how much time she'd spent watching over her passage, must've been over a month. I know you're old and that death is natural, but why? Why, mother, must you go? I'm not a child either, anymore. I have children of my own. Will they experience the same pain when I die? What do you feel when you're on the verge of death? Are you at peace? Why, God? Why must we come to uncover this mystery?
(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 October 2021, the group has 7.275 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. 
