My father was a
lamp-lighter, he used to scour the streets with a ladder on his back and leave light in his wake. He kissed my forehead when he thought me asleep, he smelled of petroleum and rushlight smoke, and I love the darkness that brought me that light. My mother was a tailor, she had a deep crease between her brows, she was quiet and measured two times before cutting once. I inherited something from each, smiled the old
well-digger. Darkness has its purpose, there is no light without it. Don't measure what you tailor with your heart. That's it. Call me next year to clean it up.
(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. 
