Chubby, sweaty, with four unbelievably large fanny packs, she was plodding on towards the elevator. I opened the door and she said, panting: come with me, I can't handle this cabin. I'm going to the ninth floor to my daughter. What was I supposed to do? All sorts of stinging smells replaced the air in the cramped place we shared. Stuck against the stainless wall, almost fainting I felt a sudden deathly sickness come over me. I'm bringing her onions and garlic from my garden, they're very expensive here and they don't taste as good, either. Hey, mister, you're as white as a ghost.
(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. 
