I was born misshapen and with an ugly face. But very happy. When I was little, I ran through the legs of the adults, eager to make them laugh about my twisted body and my faces. I made my mom laugh to tears, but I didn't understand why others looked away. I had only one friend, a velvet bear which came with me everywhere. Today, in Kensington Garden, we both sat on the bench. I noticed one of his ears ripped. I hooked it with a needle. In that moment a man collapsed on the alley. It was Mr. Bean.
(Translated by Claudia Cioplea / 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. 
