Suitcase packed. Earrings made out of a bunch of cherries hanging by my uncut ear. I exhale, leaving the world's weight off my shoulders. I turn to the lonely path and I walk. The noise of the deafening silence compels me to watch out for my slow steps which, although they touch the ground, don't make any sound. I stop. The feeling of complete deafness gradually surrounds this desert I lay in. Waiting for the nothingness which is to come stirs me up and I feel like shouting. Alert eye, deaf ear. Conviction. Demagogue.
(Translated by Alin Sescu / 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. 
