Our house was set on a hill at the edge of the forest, and from up there we could see the city, a chaotic anthill that smoked its fumes as its end lingered. For some time, after my parents fell asleep, I would sneak out to the back of the house and stare hypnotically at the sky waiting for a sign that everything would be all right. I'd wince at every plane, every shooting star, telling myself, That's it, they're here, I'm going home. The lights faded and I was left dreaming, disappointed that they had forgotten me this time too. Maybe tomorrow night.
(Translated by Alina-Dorina Nicolae / 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. 
