He insisted so much that I took him home. Set tables, neighbors under the fences, birds whistling happily. As an appetizer, my aunt broke the ice, how much do you earn, young man, she's well raised. The salad stopped in his throat, and my uncle screamed, woman, this one never ate boeuf salad in his entire life, his mother never cooked it for him, poison it early, as Caterina de Medici did with the Huguenots, my mother screamed, shut up Costel, he'll leave it, he runs, my father after him: you didn't taste my fried sweetbreads. I fill my glass with some tuica, long live, my friends, I wish you more luck next time.
(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. 
