Dreamy old grandma had planted beans climbing the cobs, so that I, Jack, could pick the pods up to the sky. Earthy grandpa had planted melons that rose under the dew, ripened under the heat, warmytasted in the evening. The drought had killed any breeze. I roasted white corn in the dry embers, smelling like burnt piglet. Dad rolled a cigarette from his handkerchief and gave it to me to smoke. I was a man, I had turned 7 years old. I got dizzy dreaming of the Ogre stealing the beans with the watermelon balls at his feet. I had eaten and cried. Granpa was asleep.
(Translated by Medeea Alexandra Stan / 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. 
