She climbed onto the ledge. In white panties and bare feet. Who knows who stood here before us? She doesn't care at all. It's like they got rid of her, what a fool she is. Make sure you don't fall, is the most sincerely I love you but I don't tell her, because it goes to her head. Instead, I lean back in my armchair and ask her. Listen, did they get your name wrong on maternity leave, or what? No, she threw over his shoulder, never taking her eyes off the stars. They wanted a boy, to call him Attila. But they got me. Horsewoman with a 10-heel. Laughs. I smoke. My little wild girl.
(Translated by Angelica Ioana Curcan / 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 September 2022, the group has 9,250 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.