The longtorridsummer had split the land and fire flames erupted from its guts. The drought had killed everything green, the ranch had dried out like manure in the sun and father had slaughtered the cattle in order not to find them with bellies full of parasites. Only Hobson's ranch was like a mushroom in a green moist forest. It didn't rain in our place. It did rain in his. That night I begged Him and told Him I'd do anything if only it rained. It is more than you can give, He told me. It rained towards daytime. A lot, way too much. There was no one waiting for me at home. They'd all left with the river that had run out of its bed.
(Translated by Mara-Sabina Rolea / 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 November 2022, the group has 9,580 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. 
