Her kerchief was contouring her face on which was one lying a smile. Today full of wrinkles crossed by tears. With bones cracking she dragged her feet through the room. She stopped in front of the shelf and stared at the picture from the last Christmas. Ten faces hardened by time were comforting her soul. She, her husband and the eight children raised with effort and faith. God took her husband in the lightened week. The children are in the world. A dark world, like the kerchief drawing on her face a huge zero.
(Translated by Ema-Teodora Rădulescu / 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 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. 
