I'm stretching like a shadow between the writhings of the earth as if they were done by a giant finger pressing on the thin skin on top of the world. From time to time, some old gravedigger hits the point of their shovel in the gate. Like a guilty woman who just gave birth, they leave me the wooden basket with dying meat, from which the soul babbles like an unborn child. I pick them up, feed them ambrosia, and cross them the river of Lethe in my palms, so I can lay them down on the other end of the road. Somewhere, a young woman opens a gate to welcome them.
(Translated by Camelia Diaconu / 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. 
