Clemency, Your Honour. I confess. I followed orders. I turned off the lights, refried the beans and cut the mayo. I crashed weddings, had false starts, killed time and hunger. I was the death of them, trampled them under foot, lead them on pretty dances, and cut them short. I emptied out accounts, landed prizes, crushed the competition and bested the opponents. I cut corners, choked down emotions and knocked them to fits. Finally, I got half seas over and came full circle. Do you catch my drift?
(Translated by Bianca-Maria Ciucașu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / 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. 
