Life got expensive, it is cheaper to die, said Costeluș, pretending to shoot himself. He was sick of only finding bills in his mailbox. He was so poor he didn't even receive Lidl offers anymore. When he heard the strong knock on his door, he was making plans about which organ to sell. He preferred opening without asking who it was behind the door. In front of his door, he found a gun and the latest bill on his shabby mat. He put it to his temples and shot. One floor below he heard the mailman: You need to buy bullets.
(Translated by Claudia Cioplea / 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 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. 
