For hours I've been running through the streets like a lunatic, with a piece of paper in my hand. My feet are carrying around my helplessness, my worries and anxieties. They've discarded me like I'm nothing. My dad's in the ICU, he left me, and the kids are young. What am I gonna put on the table, the bank installments? A gust of wind snatches my paper. A violent horn blare, a screeching brake, and a daring slur plunge me back into reality. I fondly look at the sparrow that held me back, thus saving me, and in my mind I ask: Is that you, mom? Now I know for sure, somebody up there loves me.
(Translated by Ioana Diana Sandu / 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 December 2021, the group has 7.750 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. 
