There was a great uproar, worthy of Hades. The cubic room bowed its walls all the way to the floor, crushing the air. Thought was extending its rope, in search of the tunnel to freedom. Only the abyss screamed from the depths of its very being, smashing deaf eardrums into thousands of bits. The window was his salvation every hour. It opened with an airtight sound. A pale arm, with translucent veins, handed him the candy. And the same nasty plastic cup. Ten minutes later, the air expanded, at the same time with the walls. Silence. Light. Everything. Nothing.
(Translated by Ioana Diana Sandu / 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. 
