They locked me in the room with Iulia Albu, and I had been promised that she would make me laugh, that I would get rid of depression, that I would see life as if I returned from a journey guided by a shaman smoking ayahuasca. After she cracked two or three jokes, I came to realize that this woman's humour is what Alexandru Arșinel is for the history of Venezuela or Paco Rabanne for archeology. What Aurel Vlaicu is for figure skating. Whenever she made a joke, I feltone of my neurons would die. I wanted to chokeher. Luckily, I had a key to the door. I am out.
(Translated by Roberta Ana-Maria Gulerez / 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. 
