Every time he got out of bed and left for the door, I was left staring into darkness and with his tobacco smell on my lips. Yesterday I was heading towards him, pushing the accelerator pedal to the Earth's core. I had to tell him in person I did not want him anymore. A truck threw me in a tree. I woke up in the grass, wauling like a cat, a shrivelling ball of
love-begging. I was cradled by a man, whom I recognized on the spot. He smelled of tobacco. Now I sleep in his bed every night.
(Translated by Daniela-Andreea Gugescu / 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. 
