It must be a mistake. I don't belong here. I beg you to revisit my case. You must not know who I am. What do you mean that's exactly the problem? I'm a lecturer, I have a PhD degree. Is that a sin? I've worked my socks off to get where I am. Is pride a sin? I wanted to be wealthy too, to be somebody like my neighbour. Was I greedy and envious as well? Well I wasn't to provide out of my work to lazy people. You can't tell me that I'm also stingy. Can I at least stay in purgatory? Don't send me straight to hell.
(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. 
