I was intoxicated with virtual space and media, and had also developed a brain allergy because of some repetitive Facebook videos, so I decided to spend some time up in the mountains, in peace, with no internet, or phone. A kind of social media detox. Three days later I started going through withdrawal. I dreamt of at least half an hour on YouTube. Suddenly, I kept hearing the echo of a non-existent notification sound, I wanted my virtual friends to know I'm alive, I complained to every tree individually: fuck, I'm addicted, I need my drugs.
(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. 
