He walked into the kitchen and looked at her. The beautiful, cheerful, spirited girl of yesteryear is the withered, insecure woman of today. He loved her as he had on the first day when, with her bright eyes, she had won his heart. Her parents had objected, but they had stayed together. She turned to him and laid her head on his shoulder: I'm afraid, my dear, I'm afraid of old age, of time, of loneliness. He held her with his still strong arms. She knew that for them the light wouldn't be on again. He kissed her silky hair and didn't tell her. That he, too, was afraid.
(Translated by Lenuța Bejenaru / 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. 
