They introduce themselves as believers of the new rite and speak to everyone about the light and purity of the spirit. But in fact they live on petty gossip and vulgar envy. They think they have found the truth, but they cannot get a wink of sleep because they're thinking of the grass being greener in their neighbors' yard. You almost want to shed a tear for these sanctimonious prudes of the moment, so grievously troubled by life, destiny and the system, while having already glued their mouths to a new ear, ready to do right by them. Dear me, you know it all, you feel it all to the bone. You're a saint.
(Translated by Laura-Elena Dobrin / 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. 
