The bicycle tube had broken. I was looking for a
MacGyver kind of solution, but it was to no avail. I was holding its handlebars, walking by its side. I saw a weird character, passing by my side in a trailer. He looked somewhat like a clown. He too noticed me and stopped, asking me what I wanted. I wish I could fly, I said smiling. To fix my bicycle, I said on a more serious note. He welcomed me in his trailer and I got a new tube. I thanked him and left. Before arriving home, the tube got torn again. In a skyscraper's antenna.
(Translated by Marta Fulga / 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. 
