He dreamed he was a baby boy. He was taking his first steps, his parents were holding his hands. He wasn't afraid because their palms were his support. Come on, mama's boy. One step. When he opened his eyes, he realized an old man was lying in his bed. His parents were gone for a long time and now he was learning how to walk again in the sunset of his life. How do you learn to walk at an old age? How do you relearn, when you're not afraid of falling, but of the blow of life? It clings to the walking frame. He drags his leg, then calls himself from his inside to hold his hand. Come on, little boy, one more step.
(Translated by Alina-Dorina Nicolae / 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. 
