The executioner's fear was ironically hidden behind his hood. They told him he was the devil incarnate and so he hurriedly dragged the guy through the leprous halls of the prison, on his way to the guillotine. The man barely sketched a smile, which gave the executioner shivers, so he covered it as well; he froze when the mancame closer to him to whisper in his ear that the day had one more hour, thattime was on his side, it was too early for him to die. The clock became eternal and listened to his whispers submissively. The head that fell in the basket was that of the executioner.
(Translated by Lucia-Alexandra Brînaru-Mitrofan / 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 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. 
