I've been alone, he said, for too long. I just want to talk to someone. That's it. You know what I mean. If you don't want to, we may not talk at all. We can listen to a record. Or watch a movie. That's it. You know what I mean. At some point, it gets to you. Loneliness, I mean. You know what I mean. It crushes you. And all you want is to feel that there's someone there. That's all. I just want to feel a soul, close. To feel like I hadn't completely isolated myself. You know what I mean. Come on, come on, come on. Come on. Please. Don't be afraid. There's nothing to be afraid of. Come on in.
(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. 
