From the dark, damp cellar the five little girls could hear a tremulous echo -
schnell,
schnell. Their hands clasped together, their eyes ached, and their breathing stopped for a prayer said in thought. The dog approached each wall. Waiting had turned into eternity, then a suspicious silence settled. Granny, but this is a sad story. I feel like I'm about to cry. Unfortunately, it is not a story, David. I was one of the five hidden girls. How come they didn't find you, Granny? We were little stars. This is the star in my chest.
(Translated by Adrian-George Ilinca / 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. 
