My grandfather was a captain. I loved him without knowing him. My grandmother lived, at the end, in two different universes, and I was in both, a desperate witness. The parents, I loved each one differently, but I have never really known them. Somebody once told me that fall has a taste of wine. And books, a taste of caffee. The water hisses down the pipe, like a night train in a station to nowhere. I crush the cigarette and climb into the carriage. Tickets at the control. I looked out the dirty window. Why did this tree wither, father? Of loneliness.
(Translated by Iuliana Mocanu / 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 July 2022, the group has 8,750 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. 
