Zen was the heart of the neighbourhood, always there to ease anxieties. When he would turn his gentle gaze on you, your soul would fill with light. But most of all Zen loved Matthew. She was feeling his presence before the wheelchair was turning the corner of the block. His tail was turning into a pendulum which was moving the whole of time in a second. She was cadencing her steps to the rhythm of the stroller and was barking happily, sounding like she was vocalizing. And every day, he carried the ball that Matthew would never throw to him, ever.
(Translated by Andreea Tobă / 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. 
