My hand was stuck on the envelope with the laboratory test report. I was carrying it high up front, like a placard at a protest. I can't remember the way home, but probably I took the shortest route to save time. Time was hurting me, but apart from that, nothing else. I kept repeating to myself: don't whine, girl, you could be wrong. At home, I turned on the speakers and let whoever that was play. I just wanted it to play something, so I could dance, cry, and most importantly, talk to myself as much as I wanted, without being heard. Tina Turner sang all night, she happened to be that whoever.
(Translated by Cătălina Colibaba / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / 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. 
