The old man was finally gone. Rumour had it that he had taken his own life. Rough and sullen creature. Nobody liked him. He said things too straight. Only when he got out of there was he different for a while. Quiet and peaceful. They burst curiously into the locked cupboard, but came out just as quickly, disappointed. Only thin, old books with brown stains.
Aleodor the Emperor, The Hunchback Horse, Fairy Tales, Prince Charming of the Tear. Good riddance to the madman, someone said.
(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. 
