I won't save your soul, I say as I lean into him. He's hanging over the edge, his hands clinging to the roots coming out of the gritty soil. Help me he shouts, even though he knows I won't do it. It'll be over soon, you'll crush against the rocks and the animals will devour you over the next few hours. Many days will pass before they'll find your bones. His hands are bleeding and right before falling he screams:
it should have been you. He's right, after all he was the beneficiary of my life insurance.
(Translated by Ioana Busuioc / 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. 
