Two kids were jumping on the hopscotch design outside, while I was jumping on the chair to make it wonkier, inside. I put the noose around my neck, just as I was putting the necklace around hers, inhaling the scent of her angel-touched nape. The beam, straighter than life, was getting ready to hold my body. She was looking back at me with gentle eyes from an urn and a photo, pleading. A ball shattered the window and knocked everything down. I got the broomstick; I swept the ashes. I took a seat on the chair and stared at the broken picture, while the noose was dangling like a swing, recently abandoned by its child.
(Translated by Adelina-Maria Mănăilescu / 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. 
