It is getting late. I take the red Christmas bag and place it on the table by the window. How does Saint Nicholas go through the window? My mother says: he is a SAINT. And so I am waiting. My brother, more innocent than usual, is waiting. Dad is singing Christmas carols to us. Every once in a while I stick my forehead to the window. Maybe I will see him walking down the thoroughfare. It is hard for us to go to bed. It is hot and the stove light is playing games. I fall asleep and He comes and fills in the Christmas bag. I was a good boy. I miss the red Christmas bag, the snowy thoroughfare, the fire coming from the stove and my childhood. I miss waiting for Him.
(Translated by Delia-Maria Cocoș / 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. 
