He wakes up before you do, as he has done his whole life. He lays the table under the apple tree which has grown to the sky, and he prepares your coffee and some scrambled eggs with a lot of greens. You water the flowers together, you read the newspaper. He embraces you and urges you to dance. Felicita, he says. You call Ana, because you miss her. After lunch, the linden trees whispers' lure you to a chinwag. He puts your coat on your frail shoulders and he takes you by the arm. In the evening, you go to bed early. He brings your tea, he covers you with your blanket, he kisses you on your forehead and he whispers: It isn't that bad, my love, is it?
(Translated by Diana-Maria Croitoru / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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 February 2022, the group has 7,950 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. 
