You wake up. The ceiling stares at you ominously. You get up. Ahead, is a cold and wet maze. You are searching for your slippers. They float adrift. You step through the water slowly. Its twinkling reminds you of a little girl playing by a river on a summer morning. Wasn't it actually you, it crosses your mind, but you continue on your way undisturbed. You reach the source of the spring. There is also an eternal fire there. And a white door, from which someone smiles at you, pointing at the water, the fire and some polka dots.
(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. 
