I am looking through the bars. Those people are moving so free, without a care in the world. I envy them for beating the shabby, colorless ball. They quarrel and push each other as if that game is the quintessence of the world, the future of everyone. I look through the bars from my wheelchair and wave at them. Nobody sees me or nobody wants to see me. My mother keeps telling me to just ignore them, but I can't. It fascinates me. I look behind the bars. My mother calls me home and she scolds me. They're all criminals or thieves. Yes, mom, I know. But, at least, they are free.
(Translated by Oana Georgiana Minea / 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. 
