He slammed the door with a creak. The walls vibrated behind him. He ran the streets like a madman and then started to calm down. He watched the distorted people, the fast-running cars, and the black houses with a ghostly look on his face. They terrified him.He pushed the door handle instinctively. A round hallway with five identical doors. He chose one at random. A lift with two buttons. He pressed the top one. He probably went up dozens of floors, which made his stomach turn. The door opened. Endless desert. He touched the sand with his bare feet. It was not hot and it had the consistency of snow.
(Translated by Valentina Mihai / 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. 
