I keep my head hidden and live this life. It's harder than the other ones, hope it's also the last. When I feel like not doing it anymore, I repeat my rules. Hard trials bring redemption. Until then, lye is going to eat at my flesh while washing the sins of others. Suffering strengthens the spirit. The callouses from your hand scream of hope. To be clean is to be rid of the mundane. I diligently scrub the surfaces riddled with dirt. The caustic mould irritates my nose, my throat is sore, my eyes are wet. All in vain. Some things cannot be washed away.
(Translated by Elena-Diana Cocîr / 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 November 2021, the group has 7.500 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. 
