The story begins with a glimpse from the shadow of some Prada sunglasses. June 2020. I have no idea when it insinuated itself through my eyeball, forcing its way into reason. It hit a wall and plummeted inside the soul, burning its trachea and exploding like a butterfly in its stomach. Fatal move for the fool in me. I remained suspended in time, time measured in ticks. Today, June 2025. The look has put on a white dress. A circle struggles, naively, on the ring finger. Last move. Too shy to accept a checkmate, I left.
(Translated by Andreea-Alexandra Șerbănescu / 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. 
