When I grow up I will be tall by profession. Dad is the tallest in the house and he only does what he wants. He keeps on telling me to stop smoking with him, that I'm just a kid. It's nice in our home, but my mother often cries. Dad beats her in the evening, I can hear her screaming from their room. But during the day she is happy and laughs when the village priest calls her on the phone. I'm not going to sign this essay, as I'm going to read it tomorrow at school anyway. If I don't get a good grade, grandpa won't take me to the pub anymore. He'll buy me a soda but pour me some of his beer and then grin, meaning that I am a big boy now.
(Translated by Diana Stănescu / 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. 
