When I died, everybody was happy and came bearing gifts. I received a great happiness, a cloud only to myself and no punishment, I learnt to read the stars and I travelled across the universe. When it was quiet, I listened to the thoughts of the living ones pulsating in the ether and I imagined life as something very distant, which only happens to others. I had a nice death, until one day, when I found myself floating in a liquid and I knew that the beginning was near. I left the cloud and my happiness to others and I came.
(Translated by Claudia Cioplea / 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 June 2022, the group has 8,500 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. 
