I barely reached the threshold, and Veta started questioning me: Goddamn you Mărin, where on earth were you when Christmas day is tomorrow and we have so much to do? I was at Sucă's you crazy woman, we decorated the Christmas tree. That fool took the tree inside the house, in the living room, roots and all. We dug it out, watered it, then godmother Reta facepalmed when she saw us: What did you do, you ruined this nice house. And you Mărin, you stooped to Sucă's level? Mărin, I see you watered it with booze. Bloody woman smelled the booze, even if I just ate leeks.
(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. 
