The stretcher ran over a threshold. She opened her eyes after being shaken. The white light was more intense from one neon to another and lost shine in the metal. She started feeling the taste of the dust on the plants. Lady, please, what was her name Ilinca, Ilinca, please, stay with me, a warm voice was holding her hand tightly, but the words were in vain. You are stable now, we are trying to save the baby. The nurse's words came as a punch to her, she already had 3 children waiting for her at home, what was the point now. Then she got up as an old drained fountain begging for water for the sick people.
(Translated by Luciana-Maria Buruiană / 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. 
