Never upon a time, that's how Samuel would always begin his story. And everyone in the grocery store would burst into laughter, mocking him for not knowing how to tell a story. Samuel would remain troubled behind the wooden table, cramming his fingers in the pockets of a flannel a little bit too tight underneath his armpits. His loneliness was the only thing a few numbers larger on him. He would close his eyes and repeat the story in his head, with the beginning upside down, as his mom had taught him. He had forgotten her face, but not her story. His mom had been never upon a time.
(Translated by Cristina-Bianca Ion / 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. 
