I left the desert behind, slightly dizzy and feeling the reverberations of what happened in my ribs. I still had blood spatter on my boots, but I wasn't ready to stop and wipe it off. The horse seemed to change color. His black was turning pale and gray with each gallop he jumped away from what had just happened. Am I still this morning's man? Will I ever forgive myself? Out of nowhere, a spring appeared in my path. Its clean and cold water was calling me to it. To cleanse myself, to immerse myself, to change myself into a new one.
(Translated by Delia-Maria Cocoș / 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 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. 
