I neared the steps with my soul curled up, enshrouded by emotions creased by time. The hatch was hermetically sealed in an attempt to keep my memories from escaping. She didn't know I'd erected them a monastery in my heart, at the altar of which I worship with the chaste humility of a nun. Shafts of light crept through the walls, projecting the image of me and Ana, playing at life, living out events filled with the fragrance of baked apples. When I pushed the door aside, my world met the architect of its own destiny.
(Translated by Ioana Ștefan / 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. 
