She was walking the streets half-naked, with a black felt hat covering her red, tangled hair. She had a sweet, meaningless happiness in her eyes for passers-by. She had been hit on the head, some said, her children and husband had died, said others. She was carrying a bag under her arm, God knows what it was full of. One day, a handful of ruffians tore off her satchel and pushed her into the ditch. She remained motionless like that, her eyes caught in a dream. Her true story is now known only to angels: once upon a time there was a hat shop.
(Translated by Oana Georgiana Minea / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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 January 2023, the group has 10,220 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. 
