That old man Ilie used to have a topcoat that was large enough so that even his dog would fit in. And in the inside pocket he kept a big alarm clock, like those you put on your bedside table. The dog would stick his tail out like a metronome. I loved to see the two of them going to pull the ropes of the church bells. Sometimes, when I missed mom, I'd ask him what the time was and it was the perfect time to get sick and have grandpa go with me to the Post Office in the village, call to the office in the city, saying that something was wrong with the kid. And the centralist connected me through some sort of cord to mom. Then I was all right again.
(Translated by Mihaela Dumitrescu / 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. 
