There has always been a fence. We had fallen in love, I being the son of factory workers, she coming from a line of country lords. I'd go out drinking with my high school buddies, she'd go to chamber music nights and exalted poetry. Years later, somehow, we broke through the fence and loved each other enough for the wasted quarter of a century until our pathos and purpose waned. Then she moved out of town and put up another fence, somewhere in the country. Our departure from the routine was temporary. Long live thee, madame maiden.
(Translated by Andreea Grințescu / 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. 
