Almost midnight. I can feel him approaching. I try to hide from him but the more I try the clearer he becomes. He wraps me tenderly, hugs me and kisses me. I close my eyes and feel his touch like a midsummer breeze. It scares me but I yearn for it with each passing day. For some time I have made a ritual. I pour myself a glass of wine, light a cigarette, and as I watch the smoke disappear, he touches me. I close my eyes and fall prey to him. A seagull screams in the night and drives him away.
(Translated by Ana-Maria Mușetescu / 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. 
