After that I couldn't believe in other invoked dogmas. When the smiles are fake and perfidious and hide the howls of coyotes within souls, when the declarations of love sound like ringing cymbals, when promises are crunched from sandcastles, when hugs and kisses hide the dagger of betrayal, when the cornflower smells like soaked leeks, it makes me tremble that I believed in some sects and that I cheered their leaders and I carve my face in the stone that I throw at them. I believe in courage and truth. And in poetry.
(Translated by Diana Pașcanu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by prof. dr. Nadina Vișan / Edited 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 October 2022, the group has 9,400 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. 
