Build up your mother, she told him with a twinkle in her eyelashes. She raised her train, stepped over the bricks and among the stumpy beams. She kicked a mortar bucket and cursed something about cats. She left, and with her all the gaiety went away. They all agreed, so no one ever built a wall again. It was said to bring bad luck. At most they built a bridge or a deck here and there. People lived in tents and not even the Lord descended into cathedrals anymore. Only in hearts.
(Translated by Diana Stănescu / 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. 
