In our childhood, as long as the sun was shining in the sky, Gelu would stand
stone-like for a few seconds, while I would outline his shadow with chalk on the asphalt. The street would then become a story of dozens of shadows, all starring the hero Gelu who saved people. It rained sometimes so we would have to start over, but Gelu never complained. Only when he failed to jump from a car's way in time and remained lying glued to the asphalt within an unfinished outline, did he shed a tear and the shadow covered him with chalk dust wings.
(Translated by Ecaterina Bucovanu / 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. 
