As I write, I also stir the smoked beans with bacon slowly boiling on the stove. I do it with a big wooden spoon. I won't feel sorry for the corporate worker. They are there of their own free will. And so am I here. I chose to live my life here in this little cottage, far from the world as we know it. I chose to grow my own vegetables and live my life without our mental health being affected. Today, I am going to chop wood, wash my clothes in a wooden trough, feed the ducks and remove corn kernels from the cob. Tomorrow, I'm going into the village to sell the traditional woollen carpets I myself made as well as the wool I spun. I have no time for a wild goose chase.
(Translated by Elena Florea / 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. 
