Why do you peer over me with your widened eyes? Or is it that today my old age, that knots my life's nooks, has reached its end? I am a carpenter that speaks through her hands, not through her thoughts, but will you understand? And if I carved a child it doesn't make it any less than the love with which I could've given it life. But it's late, Pinocchio, even though we talk in our sleep and a cricket, hidden under the window, will play along. You are a foolish idiot, Geppetto, shouts the cricket, the stories are alive for the one that knows death is short, but love is everlasting.
(Translated by Daniela-Andreea Gugescu / 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 April 2022, the group has 8,175 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. 
