I am first person, singular, I carve coffins in the city of steam, in a house without mirrors, for it is hurricane season and everything collapses. The darkness of the cuckoo wood has forged itself a sanctuary in me, only the city walls stand high enough to shelter my pride. And the house, with its crumbly walls, is a labyrinth created by gods, to keep me immersed in my hazardous final hour. Do not enter. You will stumble into the mud of my grey soul, hanged in the corner of my neon sign.
(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. 
