Bricked up in the old migraine, she leaned on her crutch, and with a broken heart left the cemetery. She loved him. He hadn't loved her, but he had taken care of her. She returned to the grey house, as was her life, with its dark hallway where the crate of his things awaited her. It had been a long time since she had been in the cellar and, with great effort, she managed to pull it up the steep stairs. She lit the end of a candle and sat down on the crate, catching her breath. Slowly, slowly, she made out the spot and looked herself in the eye. Held against the wall in a life-size pose. Yes, he used to be a darts champion.
(Translated by Adrian-George Ilinca / 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 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. 
