If ye saw me grinning and hopping, don't ye shy away, for that is mine way, good for grinning and hopping. If me face went long and me frown went upside down, lookie for ye own fault, because something somewhere be clearly rainin' on my parade! And whatever it may be with this world and this life, don't ye ever throw sand in me eyes, be it from a star. Not in thy eyes! Because that is where the cat gets trapped, whether ye hear it or ye don't. And then! Ye stuff it and mount it, and it still won't be the same as yesterday.
(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. 
