When I saw him I made the sign of the cross and said God forbid. Seemed out of this world. A bean pole of a man, wearing a black coat, torn at the elbows. I saw him at the market carrying some sacks with things that I imagined were magic. Please, don't talk to him, darling, he's crazy, my grandma told me one day. I promised, but I followed him for days. What do you want, child? He asked me one day, jumping from nowhere in front of me. Stop following me. Ok, I'll stop. I just want to tell you a secret. You are not a bad person. You are a good giant.
(Translated by Maria Cătălina Moisescu / 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. 
