At the butcher's, I ask for a good sausage. We only have soy ones, you know. At the dairy, I ask for some good cheese. We only have tofu, you know. At the grocer's, I ask for some good coffee. We only have chickpea and barley coffee, you know. At the liquor store I ask for some good wine. We only have marmalade and yeast wines, you know. Set on leaving, at the harbour I ask for the coordinates for a good island. We only have a deserted peninsula, you know. So now I'm sitting on my ass, rocked by the water all around, I'm gobbling up soy and tofu, and I'm drinking chickpea coffee and moonshine. From the shore I can hear out of tune guitars and drunken voices.
(Translated by Carla Bețianu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / 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. 
