The sun pulled back the thin, cloth curtain and sent two rays to tickle him. An ant gently climbed his forearm. But neither the rays nor it succeeded in what the hissing scream, like a powpow bullet, that passed through the door and shattered in his temple into a thousand pieces: Jaaaames. Yes, that was him - James Gantz. He opened his eyelids. The beams dug into his pupils as the ant continued, undaunted, its march past his elbow. He slapped it mercilessly, unaware that in twenty years or so fate would do the same to him.
(Translated by Bianca-Maria Marinescu / 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 January 2022, the group has 7.830 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. 
