The search for clues on the recent mysterious disappearances has led me towards the outskirts of the city. A gipsy camp has been camping out there for a while now. Next to the fire, a gipsy woman, staring at me with an unusual intensity. I sat next to her and started talking. Her words gleamed out with secrecy, bringing creatures and long forgotten stories back to life. I felt my body numb, heavy, and I wanted to lie down. I covered myself with a blanket. From behind the mirror in her eyes, an old man was looking at me with an otherworldly smile.
(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. 
