The clock struck midnight. The fateful hour. If you truly exist, give me a sign, Mimi said, bored and convinced that nothing was going to happen. An ominous rumble coming from under the bed had pierced the air - it sounded a bit vague at first but then it became frightening. She felt as if the ground was cracking open. The bed swayed, her skin tightened, her body had become numb. What had she done? What if her message had reached someone else? She started to pray. Please, don't prove anything to me. I believe you exist, but please, leave. The bed cracked and the echo of a sigh slowly died away into the abyss.
(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. 
