She stirs slowly in a saucepan in which she cooks something over high heat. He waits for the food to be ready. He stares absently out the window. From beneath their silence, much can be heard. She puts out the fire, takes a plate from the cupboard, carefully places the food, then sets the plate in front of him. He examines the plate, then tastes. No salt, he says. He looks up at her, but no longer sees her face, but sees a round, massive object speeding towards him from the stove. The impact could not be avoided. Does it have salt now?
(Translated by Florina Șamata / 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. 
