I can't live like this anymore, you see? These cacti are eating me up from inside. And I'm not a softie or something. But you should know that this pillow is too soft, the bed is too hard, and the vital signs monitor is too bright. I can't sleep at night. And this pain is unbearable. You're the thirteenth nurse I ask to end my suffering, but I keep hearing no and no. It's as if the whole world is bathing in a sea of kindness and altruism, but when you ask them to kill you, they bring up the morals. Get stuffed, beat it! A short beep, vital signs 0.
(Translated by Ecaterina Bucovanu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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. 
