The station is foggy, the light is dim, the waiting room - crowded. At the end of the platform, there's the newsstand. Behind the glass the saleswoman is blowing on her hands. I ask for
The Flame. Sold out, the woman says. But there's a new book. And she pulls out three volumes through the small window. Ash grey, charcoal grey, purple grey. The train arrives, I take the books and get on. I open the first volume. Death is a simple phenomenon in nature. I look up at the sky which resembles a grey wolf's fur. The gentleman in front of me is examining me carefully. In years to come I will find out that that was my shadow. Mr. Gelu.
(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. 
