Once upon a time, there were people who dreamt of being free. For this cause, they were trying to cross the border to Yugoslavia or Hungary, on the way to the Occident. Their graves are spread throughout the West border because at the same time with the dream of freedom also comes the bullets. The people were hunted with dogs and the border guards, the
so-called military man, lads around the age of 18, had the order to shoot without second thoughts. They were trying to cross through the Danube with oxygen tubes as thrusters. A lot of them ended up exploding. It is the kind of story that I hope I will never hear the news that it has been repeated. Then, I start watching the breaking news.
(Translated by Beatrice-Ioana Huruială / 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. 
