Ana was building a sandcastle in the warm light of the afternoon, next to her mother who was reading leisurely under the cherry blossoms. Ionuț, Ana's brother, was squealing with pleasure and was shouting louder and louder, in the swing in which his father was throwing him towards the sun. I know, now you're expecting that swing should crack and Ionut should fly through the air in order to end up with his head crushed in a puddle of blood. I will disappoint you. It's just a normal scene in the life of some happy people. Because IKEA swings are tested for long-term safe use.
(Translated by Florina Șamata / 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 August 2022, the group has 9,000 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. 
