My, oh, my, what a handsome baby boy I brought into the world to grow up to be full of joy. That night, the childbirth came with so much pain that streams of blood covered the bed and from that blood an evil spirit showed his head. In an inhuman voice, he said: make him stop, lass. But he wouldn't stop. Then in bed clothes I quickly wrapped him up. Yet the crying didn't stop. The evil spirit kept asking for him, I handed the boy to him and eventually, we buried him. My, oh, my, what a handsome baby boy who will no longer grow up tall and full of joy. On summer nights, he won't get to love his pretty lass or to dance hora with the other village lads.
(Translated by Valentina Mihai / 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. 
