Nobody goes out on the streets. Nobody believes the writing on the red-scribbled poster. They don't even unchain their legs despite having their hands free. They don't wear muzzles although they did wear them in silence for a while. They look out the window with the lights off, stare through the peephole and flip a jar against the neighbour's wall to eavesdrop. It's quiet. Could it be a setup? Everything ends when the small guy on the ground floor writes freedom on the street. They break the door locks, leave their children, run to their lovers. The small guy lights a pipe and thinks well, I'm leader material. They believed me.
(Translated by Alin Sescu / 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. 
