Shh. Mommy, we want to hear the story of the Unhappy Man. Darlings, did you sharpen your claws before bed? Yes, we did.Gather round underneath the place where the Unhappy Man's heart lies. Mother, why can't he see us? Because, at some point, everything that exists in his world, disappears. Is that why the Unhappy Man drinks alcohol? Yes. Why didn't the Girl Who Heals People love him? That is something we will never know. Mother, we'd like to befriend the Unhappy Man. I know. Unfortunately, he doesn't know that the goodness in his heart helped us settle here.
(Translated by Raluca Ioana Crucerescu / 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. 
