17:00. The front door can be heard and I flinch. I'm afraid. I feel the cold air rush in and a shiver runs through my body. I begin to shiver uncontrollably. He calls out to me and I feel tears coming. I don't want it anymore, I can't take it. I head for the kitchen and I hear my heart thudding in my head. I'm only 9 years old and I'm getting scolded, insulted, and slapped in the face because my little sister didn't eat her soup. Mommy, I'm waiting for you, please show up, I don't have your courage. I'm afraid. I just wanted to play.
(temă în parteneriat cu
Ideo Ideis, 2022)
(Translated by Liliana Popescu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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. 
