The evening did not predict what was going to happen. Only a corner of the sky chuckled gloomily, bringing a wrinkle to my mother's forehead as she made the sign of the cross on my chest, calling for angels. The midnight rumble broke the silence. Then the scene fast-forwarded before my young eyes. Rising water levels, cries of man and beast, the doll and furniture floating, Lupu howling on the old branch, Daddy facing Everything. Then a stillness in which my world turned upside down. Not three times as in a tale, when a miracle comes. Once. Devastating. Only Daddy's still smiling. From above the clouds.
(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. 
