She watched the sun. In an hour it would set, the cemetery chapel would close and with that her last chance to see her mother alonewould be gone. Shivers of fear, longing and resignation came down her spine. Tomorrow the coffin would be closed and placed in the ground. On the Day of The Dead, what an irony. She let out a short, strong gasp and descended the steps to the cold crypt, shivering, tugging at her jacket. She raised the lid of the coffin with a groan; the wax figure of her mother, which stood calm under the shroud, had lost any sharpness. She touched her mother's hand timidly. Mom, I'm here and I forgive you.
(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. 
