The child stared in amazement, not daring to touch the door. In the other room she saw her father with his forehead in his hands, crying. Pussycat, are fathers afraid too? She didn't get an answer, but she felt him look at her with puzzlement. Who knows, she answered herself. Maybe they're children too. Strong children, but children just like us. I'm afraid of shadows and monsters, she continued. Surely he's not afraid of monsters because he's always waiting in the dark until I fall asleep. Maybe shadows. But why cry when I'm here.
(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. 
