For four years they've mocked me. I'm ugly, poor, nerdy. I've been waiting, but the prom's tonight. Their mouths will drop when they find out I'm going with John. He's a sailor, so he's tan. He's the most handsome man in the world, dark-haired, athletic body, blue eyes, smooth as an actor. An apparition. The girls will be head over heels and the boys will discover they wanted me. I told him my grievances and he brought me a princess dress. Him? Like something out of a fashion magazine. We're leaving, Melissa, let's knock them out, uncle John stopped my tears.
(Translated by Andreea Grințescu / 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. 
