My folks used to cover every crack, crevice or breach with clay, thatch and manure. So as years passed, the walls of the house got bigger squeezing us together like in a vise. The house, once towering and roomy, remains today, as I step again on the wet soil of childhood, only a small door with a low ceiling and thick walls framing a refrigerator. And on the refrigerator, a piece of paper, yellowed by time and hatred. It's Grandpa and Grandma sitting at opposite ends of a long, empty table, and me under it, crying in horror. Why them?
(Translated by Mălina Ioana Butaru / 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. 
