We would bounce the ball around all day until we would be parched, and when we couldn't keep going anymore, we would start checking to see if any one of us has a square key. We all had a key around our neck, but whoever had a square one was the coolest, because it would fit the tap of the water pipe coming out of the co-op's basement perfectly. We didn't need juice, ice cream, or watermelons - that water, coming straight from Pipe Springs was the only thing we needed. Then we would switch sides and continue our game.
(temă în parteneriat cu
Ideo Ideis, 2022)
(Translated by Constantin Istrate / 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. 
