Endure, woman, the priest said. He loves you. That's the way it is. Did you fast? Did you pray? It will be fine. She knew it. She knew that if you endure enough, God will have mercy on you. That's what her mother used to tell her in those nights when they fell asleep without eating. It will be alright. Then Gelu married her. He wasn't beating her often; it was only when he was losing at cards and he was coming home drunk. She crossed the street through the drizzling, freezing cold rain. It will be fine. When she turned her sight to the headlights, approaching in an erratic dance, she almost smiled.
(Translated by Georgiana Morozii / 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. 
