He kept fidgeting, one minute he would open his mouth and shut it down, unable to find his own words. They were at the gathering in the village, carolling and telling jokes and stories. Out of nowhere, Onu blurted out, so his mouth started running. I saw them last summer, and I was familiar with their singing, but I was not allowed to say anything 'cause it would do no good, panted Onu. He looked relieved. They all laughed, he wanted to laugh too, but no sound came out of his mouth from that moment on. Well, some stories are better not to know.
(Translated by Iuliana Boruga Danciu / 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 March 2022, the group has 8,050 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. 
