The child was in terrible pain, his flesh kept melting every morning. Mother was always at his bedside, nursing his wounds and not daring to tell him. What was the point? Those were the last days. Hearts were curled in tight embraces, like when things were good. They couldn't allow it, the burns on the baby's body were festering. From place to place, hope crusted over. Then it stung again. Morphine, she screamed, crushed, to the nurse. From her eyes dripped pain, from her lips - prayers. The little darling closed her eyes, tired: Mommy, I know you adopted me.
(Translated by Cosmina-Florentina Ciobanu / 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. 
