Put on a pedestal and I'm savoring my
self-sufficiency. I'm looking down in disgrace. Suddenly, I'm stumbling and falling. From way too up there. Mud is around me. I'm puddling disgustedly and shaking myself off. I'm covered by my neck. I'm tiptoeing so I can't feel what I crush and I step high. It's gurgling around and when it's popping, I'm avoiding drops. A bubble is forming itself next to my face, I'm trying to walk so I can avoid it, it's bursting, drops hitting me and I'm getting myself ready to spit it out in disgust. Oh, oh. I can feel him on my lips. I want it more.
(Translated by Anca Cristina Georgiana Mihai / 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. 
