I keep inside me a prayer. I struggle. Early in the morning I start wondering, going here and there, I have a loaf of bread in my pocket, I drink water from the water fountain. The city seems deserted, the fog is barely lifting, nothing is inspiring me, a dog is following me around. It is warm this winter, but I have a writer's block, I cannot pull myself together. An ambulance rushes with the siren on, some people are dying, some are being born. Somebody is asking me why I am wearing pyjamas. I feel stupid. I head back home. In the lobby, she tells me, leaning on the wall, that she loves me. I have something to write about.
(Translated by Raluca Simion / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by prof. Nadina Vișan / Edited 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 March 2023, the group has 10,790 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, Luchian Abel, and Vlad Mușat. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale. 
