What should we call our little one? thought Lily and Florian Flowerescu. Hortensia, she's born on Flowers' Day, right? A name that at the Central School for Girls brought her only concerts of insults and torment. Old Hortensia, your pension's here, they'd shout after her. After high school, the one who knocked her up, whispered that he had other flowers to pollinate, and off he went. She raised her boys on her own, as best she could. And all her life she told them: When I'm gone, don't bring me flowers.
(Translated by Andreea Tobă / 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. 
