Since this dude's come to my workplace, I no longer sleep. Cement mason. A mysterious big fella, hell knows what's up with him. I did ask. Withdrawn, not once did he look at me. I'll show you who's ya daddy. And I start watching him. Guy takes the subway, transfers between two trolleys and one tramway, the city ends, where is this guy going, hell? He treks through the weeds, me after him, nettle-stung and dust-covered, I look like a mess. Suddenly he turns and says: girl, look, since you like playing with fire, why don't we climb in that crane and get ourselves covered in these here ticks?
(Translated by Ioana Ștefan / 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. 
