Four people, three flies, two full glasses, an empty one, a bottle of vodka, an ashtray, a cup of coffee. We keep saying cheers and many happy returns and you say nothing, nothing?, says the first man, with a rattled voice. The other two agreewith a snorty laugh, splattering spit. Do you actually believe I hope you get to live many returns?, says the fourth, while taking out the chainsaw with which they had cut the wood for the business. The hunks of meat slumbered in the belly of a coffin. No one will suspect anything. The flies are silently slurping away.
(Translated by Daniela-Andreea Gugescu / 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. 
