You slapped me again. I know I deserved it, I didn't wipe the dust off your shoes. I'm starting to stop hurting and feel your touches like sweet caresses. It hurts more when you ignore me. I love my scars, though I hide them under my foundation for fear someone will notice. I couldn't bear to lose you. At night I leave them bare and touch them lovingly, to feel your fist prints and razor's edge. Tomorrow I ask you to put the gag in my mouth, I don't want to scream and let the new neighbor hear. She was looking at you suspiciously.
(Translated by Bianca-Maria Marinescu / 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. 
