I've always been drawn to the iron cage of the elevator, with the metal grating that I force open like my own fate and then pull behind me, permanently isolating myself from what outside means, always turning inward. I never know where I will descend to, I decide, every time, at the last minute. I've tried floor after floor, music, wine, leather, gentleness, submission, struggling. Although I often remain hungry, I dare not end it with any, for the few moments while they remain alive shorten the eternity in which I remain dead.
(Translated by Anca Maria Florea / 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. 
