In the ICU ward, trembling with excitement, in an impeccably pressed gown, the resident was waiting for the professor. Cause of death, asked the professor, as soon as he entered. Haemorrhagic stroke. Prepare his organs for transplant. Excuse me, but the patient also had cirrhosis, lung metastases, chronic pancreatitis, renal failure, we can't use anything. He spent his last few years living on the street. So can't we find anything good about him? The professor insists. Yes, a book of poems, published 20 years ago.
(Translated by Raluca Simion / 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. 
