Three lemons hanging at the gate. Three. Lest he passes through my doorstep and turns him back around. Four nails and a horseshoe, up in the beam above the porch. Four. Lest he enters out of hurt. Doru looking at icons, willow branches, fasting five days a month, sometimes on Fridays too. Five. Tickle his feet in his slippers. Let six devils jump on his head, his night be short, his eyelids be stiff. Six. Let him always be thirsty, and the more he drinks, let his heart break in seven pieces. Seven passions and sins, let Geta have him.
(Translated by Bianca Ioana Prisecaru / 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. 
