I put on so much weight that all the words I kept for myself hung disgracefully, knowing I should have been more generous to those who deserved to delve into them. For 256 days I've been keeping a diary and a diet to get rid of the verbal fats. It was a hard start, I even got into withdrawal because of the word
no. I was shrieking and spitting, but it was still "no". It hung hysterically to my arteries like a lover banished from bed. I felt so light. I can admire my reflection now. I fit into myself again.
(Translated by Diana Pașcanu / 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. 
