The memory of the nightmare still pains him. And after six months, his nights are still crowded with those people from the emergency room, the wide eyes trying to escape death and that to and fro which kept on feeding the hellish, body and soul crushing machine. How happy are those who don't dream. Now he's glad to see the grass growing once more. And lucky to not have kicked the bucket over the winter. He took a deep breath in, careful not to get drunk on the strong air. Breathing with your own lungs - that's luxury, boss, not lunacy - luxury and opulence.
(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. 
