I come home from work, hang my coat on the coat rack, give her a hug, she pulls away. We head for the kitchen, sit down at the table and I watch her rake the food onto her plate. What's up? I ask her. We have a new group assignment. And? She puts her plate away, I don't feel like eating you know, it's about an imaginary lover. Go ahead, write, make something up. Well, that's just it, and she wipes an imaginary crumb off the table. Strange, I'm not in the mood for eating either, I'm getting up authoritatively. I'm gonna smack you on the head like this, for real. Oh, my.
(Translated by Delia-Maria Cocoș / 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. 
