We stand face to face. Our souls released from each other a long time ago. Some memories stubbornly pull the strings that kept us bound for 13 full years like a sore breast. Happy at the beginning. Then, with each rotation of the earth, we extinguished another light. One day we woke up buried in darkness. We used the last box of matches for a while, until we burned the tips of our once caressing fingers. Today is a lucky day. Tuesday the 13th, 1pm. Our souls released from each other a long time ago. We sit back to back. First step. We embrace ourselves back.
(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. 
