the village is asleep. It is dead silent. An oil lamp is flickering here and there watching over dreams hanged in a pouch on the porch. Ileana closes the book and prays. One yearning away, over six hills, the greedy city opens its doors. Colored lights, wheel of fortune, shops filled with illusions. They all await forcraving souls to be lured by the exhibition of bliss. Eleny gets in her stockings. Empty promises. Meanwhile, God is walking on the tightrope of time.
(Translated by Alin Sescu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected 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. 
