Every year, on the evening of 31.12, at 23:45, I intentionally get stuck in the elevator. I open a beer, undress completely and study. A kind of annual inspection. I like the way I age, I like the white strands and the wrinkles around my eyes. Happy Birthday. Everyone is happy and I don't understand why. Life is a game where you have to learn to lose everything every day. I'm smashing the mirror glass. The foam drips over a few of my faces. It's 5:30. I unlock the doors. I'm getting out of the elevator. The first quiet moments of the year.
(Translated by Delia-Maria Cocoș / 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. 
