Absolute silence. As soon as I'd pull it out, I'd throw it in the truck, full of dirt and maelstrom. You wouldn't even hear the crickets, only the sounds of pulling and throwing. You needed skill, not everybody could do it. Especially when it was pitch-black. Well, the smack on the head the owner gave me with a bludgeon when we got caught stealing also happened in pitch-darkness. Along with the metallic taste from the blood I kept trying to wipe off while I was running, I was also tasting the sweetness of the leeks paired with the saltiness of the moist mud. Sometimes dying is worth it.
(Translated by Monica-Andreea Gaman / 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. 
