For every 3 live frogs, you get a chocolate. For every 5, a doll or a tractor. You just have to catch them, get them inside the house and take a picture of them. Ready? Go, says old Mitru laughing toothlessly. 10 children rush out in search of the goodie-bringing frogs. The old man sips from his flask of brandy, lies down on his side in the grass and falls asleep. He's suddenly woken up to the screams of angry mothers. A couple of rods shake him up good. Stop it, you wackos, he winces hard and takes off. You'll get to see the prizes when horses fly, he grumbles.
(Translated by Oana Ionescu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by conf. dr. Daria Protopopescu / 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. 
