I've grown old and I won't admit it, but I'm ashamed of my childhood, which I've sealed behind a silver lock in the attic of my grandparents' house. My ancestors' bones hurt and I leave trails of blood behind as I drag my feet after me, if only to leave something behind as well. Maybe I've died one day and maybe I'm reborn, that's why I'm howling at the only slap I've slickly got on my ass. For sure it's only what I've sealed with a silver lock and the key is rattling in my stomach and clattering against my bones. Of emptiness.
(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. 
