He laid out the white tablecloth and smoothed it with his clean palms. He placed the candle and a prayer book, a white napkin and a deep golden bowl of water on the table. Two blades of cane, a fresh kolach, a twig of blooming briar and a full red-wine glass. He didn't sit. He crossed himself with his eyes closed mumbling Lord's Prayer. The white handkerchief was trying to escape from his hands. A breeze started out of nowhere in the Lord's house. He raised his blue eyes in hope. But no. Not yet.
(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. 
