The sanatorium was quiet. They all wrote to Santa Claus. Except for the little ones. Zara, here is Santa. It is not. There was a man who came to his wife. I am going to talk to him. Santa, I am not writing to you anymore. I asked you to make my mother well, and you gave her a gift to God. I wanted my dad to laugh again, and he only laughs when his glass is in front of him. He no longer sees me. I'm not asking you anything anymore. Don't cry, Santa. I was not angry. He stroked his long beard and kissed the tears in it. I stand next to you. I don't leave you alone as I am.
(Translated by Laura-Elena Dobrin / 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 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. 
