It's
half-open, so there is still hope. Once I've entered, I would have lost it all.
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate. I still don't want to go inside. I don't want to lose my hope. What would my life be without hope? The life of an ephemeron waiting to be stomped out by an
all-powerful boot. I thank you, love, for the progress we've made. Until today, I would only admire your thighs through the black mourning skirt. Now is the time for change: you either close the door on me, or you take off your goddamned undies.
(Translated by Constantin Istrate / 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. 
