I'm looking for my keys in my purse, I drop them. Oh. I'm bending over mumbling. Do you need help? I hear the question and the voice sent me to the past. It was him, he wanted to help me. Unlike the first time, to raise my papers on the floor, unlike the second time, to close my dress' zipper, and unlike the third time when I threw in a bag a few memories and pieces of my soul. No, thank you. I looked him in the eyes. They were empty and sad. No longer his. He lost them 10 years ago when he left me for his secret family and perfect love.
(Translated by Maria Cătălina Moisescu / 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. 
