It's been so many years, there's no point keeping count. You are my life. I was born with you. I breathed through you. I fed on you and was, in turn, your nourishment and shelter. I grew in you from the roots with which you replanted my love. Now I have to tear my soul in two and accept that you can't go on. But it'll be alright. You won't even be able to tell. It'll be like in those dreams where we always met. Safe journey, my love, he said, and slowly pressed down on the syringe plunger.
(Translated by Cristina Fliter / 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. 
