I was sitting at the table by myself and frantically counting the shadows on the floor. Maybe they knew Gelu. They had taken part in his transgressions. From a month or so ago, he started coming here with that whore, daily, for a coffee. I asked the shadow bound to the table leg what she knew about their future plans. But nothing, she was silent like an idiot. I had wake up from this agony. I stood up and went straight to the bar. I told him I wanted a hard one, quickly. I had sex right there, behind the counter, with the barman. I just wanted a ristretto.
(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. 
