It was no use, I couldn't avoid her. Her hound-like nose in the shadow of the curtain never missed my returning home. When I opened the elevator door, the air was filled with Aunt Vica's luscious curves. Invariably she'd come up: for her wallet, purse, or whatever it was she'd forgotten. The door closed and the jihad began. Melodramas woven with the cunning of a spider would grab me in webs soaked with the toxins of her existential crises. I always arrived home drained of energy, like a lemon in a marinade. Signed exchange contract. I'm moving out tomorrow. Downstairs.
(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. 
