A multitude of lights was colourfully flashing over the city, announcing the holiday a few hours away. On the deserted streets, the cold stone was basking in the sunset's sunrays. Only a wailing bark would now and then tear through the sky, foreshadowing the firecrackers that would later pierce hearts and brains with relentless cruelty. Nicodim had hidden Dor under the bridge that cut the city in two. Crouched under the gray blanket that he had received from the pastry shop on the corner of the street, where he kept count of his days and money, the child and the dog were entering a new year, looking, through the bagel's hole, at a whole new world.
(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. 
