I show him the wound. It's ripe and it stretches to the beginning. He shows me his wound. It's still there and it stretches over everyone loved or hated, to the end. I kiss it, and pus begins to ooze from my lips. He wipes it away and asks me not to be embarrassed because we each have a hidden one. A cruel one that won't heal and that he was probably born with and will die with. I've had enough, I tell him. I feel like a leper who sees his soul pierced. That's good, he replies. Those holes are gem embroidery across the Sky.
(Translated by Luciana-Maria Buruiană / 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. 
