My father was a projectionist. From the booth, through the window, I saw the films of other people's lives. I didn't have a bike, nor did I steal one. I have a girlfriend who's pretty, her mother already wants her to be a child actor. I know someone up there loves you if you punch hard; I decided, being weak, never to get out of the projection booth again. Dad had a stroke during
Psycho; he's been sitting mummified in a chair behind the curtain ever since. I tell them he's having lunch, I get the reels, and I project. I may have a flaw, but for me it's Heaven.
(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. 
