Gelu is the bearded seductive artist that quotes Noica. Whenever he meets a lady at a dance, he shakes her to her very core. He drives a 60' convertible, one hand on the steering wheel and the other on her leg, or mine. His house smells like tobacco and incense from India. Beyond the plant jungle, a 'The Stooges' vinyl can be heard playing. He is approaching you, barefoot, his shirt unbuttoned and carrying a mug with tea and rum. He whispers to you that he doesn't read, but he listens to podcasts. Suddenly, you realize that Gelu doesn't exist.
(Translated by Marta Fulga / 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. 
