Hey, young man, isn't that shirt tight on you? the woman's invitation echoed so alluringly in his ears. Who, me? he answered, thinking he would never get to hear those words again. Do you see anyone else in the room besides us, dear? I want to, but I can't, he uttered with false shyness. Take it off, what are you waiting for? Haven't you always wanted to? He felt the blood swelling in his veins in the middle of the night; dozens of ants were crawling under his skin, while he desperately tried to tear off his straitjacket, screaming.
(Translated by Oana Ionescu / 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 December 2022, the group has 9,880 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. 
