Nobody recalls hearing him say something. He was born without a cry and became an adult in silence. If he needed something, he would point at it, if he didn't, he would shake his head.
He's such a good child, his mother would mutter.
He must be dumb, his school teacher said. Do not send him to school anymore - he's
slow-witted. They made him a shepherd, then ge got married... He did everything his way. When he felt his time was near, le lay down on the bed, opened his mouth and said what he had kept inside him.
I'm not dumb - I was only listening to you all. But I'm stupid, indeed - for having waited for you to hear me out.
(Translated by Elena Florea / 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. 
