Day 1. Heavy rain. I. Deserted beach. A starfish looks at me strangely. Day 2. Raining. Me and a couple on the beach. The starfish retreated. It gave way to insolent algae. Day 3. Clouds. Some kids build a sandcastle that redefines its color. Terrace. You. Day 4. Sun. Light breeze like young thought. You are talking to me about Cărtărescu. Day 5. Sunrise. Lips are looking for each other. The bodies intertwine. The sky is burning. Day 6. The Intercity swallows me up, spitting me out in the newspaper. The starfish reappeared.
(Translated by Ana Spînu / 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. 
