Since I was a child, I felt I existed in many places. She'd stick her hand in my hair and scream to leave her boyfriend alone. I'd snap at her as well and tell her I didn't know him. No, that wasn't me. She hugged me tight and cried on my chest for endless minutes. Her favourite granddaughter. I didn't have a grandmother. He asked me to accept the red roses. They were for his girlfriend. He was bringing them to the cemetery. He showed me the picture. We looked strikingly alike. I was walking down the street and ran into her. We stopped in front of each other. We smiled at each other. Cold shiver. It was me again.
(Translated by Camelia Diaconu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by prof. Eliana Ionoaia / 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. 
