Losing a child produces an unimaginable pain. But for Billy's family his disappearance that morning was devastating. Billy was crouching in the red house, because he had heard his mother say to his father in the morning: If you are going to overdrink you'll sleep with Lucky. So Billy, having finished his 13th glass of milk, was ready to take the blame and went to sleep. The dog's wet muzzle was sniffing the sleepy clothes of the boy. Through the boards of the cage, the light of the flashlight shone with joy. He is here with the dog.
(Translated by Andreea Laura Stanca / 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. 
