A luxury getaway to Salamanca. Grand Hotel Don Gregorio, five stars. Penthouse with private elevator. I pick him up and go down to the bar even though I'm already wasted. Everything in the lobby seems to have changed. It's the same luxury but only the Sofitel Wellington logos can be seen. God, I'm on the other side of the globe in New Zealand. I go back to the cabin, push the button, wait, the doors open. Good God, is that you? Yes, you got too high too early. Press reset, because the defibrillator is charging in order to unlock you.
(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. 
