The child was enjoying a leisurely stroll, glancing from time to time at the linen bag and reaching for a dog plushie to ruffle. Beni the lame had died, and, ever since, he would carry the silent plushie wherever he went. They were inseparable. The bag was gone. The child's cries impressed the whole street and so every
passer-by started looking for it. The child was unusual, and the puppy was his only friend. He was screaming in pain and covering his eyes. He didn't want to see the cars passing by, he didn't want to remember. Some plushie moustaches tickled his hands. The wet,
wide-open eyes curved into a smile.
(Translated by Cristina-Bianca Ion / 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. 
