It was hellish weather. Dark clouds like a soul without love were blending with the sky in a puzzle that I would've never wanted to finish. I was waiting under a huge umbrella, so huge that it was still not protecting me from the storm. Raindrops were trickling down my hair locks, down my cheeks, pooling on my breast, like in a kid's game. Sitting on the cold stone for what felt like an eternity, I was drawing lots for the day I would start loving (myself). Three straws were burning my hand: yesterday, today, tomorrow. The short Straw kept coming up. Maybe Today will be lucky.
(Translated by Tania Diniță / 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. 
