I sit and watch these little, red, round ones go by. They go on and on. What freshness. This river flows from beginning to end, on the same schedule. It's not allowed to swirl. It started with a breath of eternity. I'm the miller from the little mill. Head of the small sluice. I sit in a small, fast, unknowing, secret room. The engine room. I make sure the river's right. One day, the river will stand. I, the atrium, will be locked up. The longing that kept me alive will be gone. Like a faithful soldier, I'll salute. It's been an honor.
(Translated by Oana Irina Oprea / 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. 
