He was watching her. Ten years later, when he would see her, his breath would still stop. Her eyes were open. Wide. He bent down to close them. He couldn't. She stared at him. He saw the clenched fist. Her nails dug into her flesh as if with the last crumbs of life she was trying to protect something. He looked. A pregnancy test. Two dashes. He took her in his arms and tried to warm her. He couldn't. His heart froze to the shore. He kissed her and her coldness shook his caress. Those who have done this will wish for the afterlife, he said through his teeth. He was watching her.
(Translated by Anca Maria Florea / 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. 
