Bewildered, he slid on the cold stage. The blinding light scared him, so he started screaming. Someone caught him and calmed him down. He stormed through the school, hurrying upstairs. He loved the spotlight. He needed their applause like fresh air. Someday I'll do everything I didn't have time for, he always thought. The room was almost empty now. Only those close him were there. The end came with the curtain fall. The spotlights went out for a moment and turned on again. Next in line. Bewildered, another one slid on the cold stage.
(Translated by Carol Popa Zafiriadi / 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. 
