I had signed up for an intervention through which I would be given a short reset to my heart. I was hopefully only making a short foray to one of the well-deserved gates, that of Heaven or Hell. The doctors had equipment and ways to reverse the process, in case the heart stopped after about 5 seconds. The main measure was an electrode stuck from my neck, on a vein, to my heart, through which I would be given electrical impulses for stimulation. And behind that door I'd already seen the ultimate remedy, I think: a shovel either for knocking me down or for digging.
(Translated by Elena Patricia Măroiu / 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 February 2023, the group has 10,500 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. 
