She smiled, her eyes closed. She reached out and touched him. She opened her eyes, almost scared. She hadn't touched him in months. The stranger who snored lightly was her husband. She had loved him. They had grown up together. The day they graduated, he came to her to ask her to be his teacher of happiness for life. The stranger next to her now loved only beer and grandchildren. How funny he looked like that, with his mouth open. She strokes his forehead lightly. Smiling bitterly, she placed a pillow between them and turned her back.
(Translated by Ana-Maria Mușetescu / 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. 
