I suffer from extreme stubbornness; I like to knock on closed doors. The harder one slams it in my face, the more stubbornly I return to it. Believe me, I don't even stumble, though I turn back with such enviable speed and so eager that not even a blizzard could stop me. It makes sense that I went to the doctor to seek treatment. Chronic masochism. Maso what? I didn't agree with the diagnosis, so another door was slammed in my face. I came back with a smirk on my face and two words of wisdom: I'm sado-masochistic, doc.
(Translated by Bianca-Maria Marinescu / 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. 
