The little feet were clumping the cold floorboard in search of a familiar shadow. Mommy, where are you? Mummy? The clock struck the night's cadence twice, the metallic sound nestled in her heart, awakening a faded, lost whisper. Mommy? The jaws of a hissing wind bit hard against the time-weathered woodwork, entering through a cracked window with a hiss that blew the light of the candle in her hand. The darkness lay like a cloak of mist over the shadowy silhouettes. Gasping, the desperate sound crashed against the nothingness around her. Light. Mother.
(Translated by Adrian-George Ilinca / 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. 
