I had polished the labyrinth like a true Venetian, so much so that I couldn't get it off the soles of my shoes. The gondolier was Picasso, with his sailor's shirt, in his underwear, in the middle of town. I ask him to teach me his craft. He says, before you learn how to use a brush, you must learn how to use the oars. I fell into my thoughts; out of the gondola. I slid down the cupola of the doge's palace into the bed of the beautiful Venetian, dressed in a string thong made out of Ariadne's thread. I asked her how many exits there are and only then did she show me the entrance.
(Translated by Constantin Istrate / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by prof. Daria Protopopescu / 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. 
