He saw them in the distance. Checkered pattern luggage, full of little useless objects, blonde girls wearing tight skirts that are about to fall apart when they go up the stairs, revealing ephemeral hips. Sad accountants carrying small briefcases, counting their steps to nowhere. A huge watch that pigeons walk on its minutes. He approached, dragging his days after him, harnessed to his own life, which he did not remember asking for. Sometimes he would stop abruptly, and the days were dampened and compressed, springs, throwing it away. He would arrive on time. Climb up, ladies and gentlemen.
(Translated by Ana Spînu / 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. 
