I'm poor. Across the street where I live there's some rich people's house. Sometimes I sneak in (doesn't matter how) in the courtyard gazebo with orchids in the window, crawl up to the kitchen, put every food item I find around the fridge in my backpack, then I bring my prize back to old Nina, an aged lady who is sick and far too lonely, who moved in just recently. Last night, just when I was jumping over the fence from the villa's yard, a policeman caught me and took me to the precinct. He read my statement and set me free. Old Nina was his aunt.
(Translated by Elena-Diana Cocîr / 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. 
