operator I panicked. I patched it up with the surgeons. I had sent my daughter to chat with them. The only ones I couldn't find some solution for were the anaesthetists. I got lucky with the stretcher-bearers. They know everything. You've got the envelope, old man? Yes. How much? Two hundred. That's good. Put it over here. Not there, old man, they're gonna steal it from you. Put it beside the cock, they'll take it when they insert the catheter. I heard them. I waited on the stretcher, naked, in front of the operating room block, with the envelope between my thighs. I think they took it because they kept on fawning over me after the surgery.
(Translated by Jessica-Polixenia-Cristiana Copilaș / 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. 
