Dammit, there's nothing good about this. Here I am, perched on top of this mountain of treasures and I can't even get food to my mouth. Buried in a palace will all of my tremendous wealth, I'm down at the mercy of whoever thinks to feed me and give me water. I don't need riches. Poor and obese, what greater happiness is there? You all living in Queer Street, you're unhappy all the time but never know how good you have it. Leave the likes alone and give me a hamburger or something. My name is Midas and I'm a gold addict.
(Translated by Carla Bețianu / 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 May 2022, the group has 8,350 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. 
