A broken heart rested in a corner. Time stood still and tiny particles of dust settled on him and his eyelids. It smelled of old books and a little damp clay. Like a still life painting, nothing was happening, just memories being collected in clocks gnawed by mice and butterflies. When someone came in, it was for a celebration. The door would strike a bell and a little girl's head would jut cheerfully out from under the massive desk, hitting the wall so sharply. Hi, I'm looking for a dream, can you help me? No, I'm just coloring, Grandpa's doing the stencils.
(Translated by Liliana Popescu / 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. 
