He gazed at the circular staircase that made him think of an endless shell. He went up those steps every morning after unlocking the gate, guarded at night. It stretched on upwards, through the labyrinth of pipes winding around the pool full of enchanted water that filled his soul with restlessness and joy. Having arrived at the top of the little tower he would open the window to see the
newly-awakened city. It still seemed to him that his donkeys were calling to him, he could still feel the wagon's sway. The old gramophone kept him company and he fell asleep, whispering, barmy water bearer's soul.
(Translated by Cristina Fliter / 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. 
