He had been living in the tacky basement of the building. One day he reached the bottom floor and looked enchanted at the marble staircase walking upstairs. Where do you want to go, asked the watchman. Upstairs, he whispered faintly. The man pointed to the elevator. He quickly found the UP button and pressed it. The trip seemed
never-ending, but he finally made it. The elevator door opened directly into the beautiful penthouse. Come on in, the voice thundered. He took a few steps and hit the straight gold bars. In their reflection he discovered his canary feathers. The elevator was gone.
(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. 
