Tell me the password. What password? The password. How do you think you get into Heaven? When they sent me here, they didn't tell me any password. Who are you? I don't see your name on the list. Today I have 20 persons, and I don't recognize your face. Dorel. That's it, I found your name. You hurried like a virgin who wants to get married. You, Death, what the hell did you do? You messed up left and right again. I told you left, because you have a scythe in your left hand. Oh, now I see it's the other left. Let me work it out. You, Dorel, once he says To be or not to be, take a step to the left so that the spotlight doesn't fall on your head.
(Translated by Anca Cristina Ilie / 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.