Mommy, where do people go when they die? The house has gone quiet. We don't answer. He tries again: Mommy, don't you hear me? Where do souls go? Who turns on the light underground while people are in the wooden box? How do we talk to them? Do they have a phone there? Hey, Mom. Stop pretending to write on the computer. Why are you crying? Did I say something bad? Mommy, if you're not with me anymore, will I be alone? Without a mother? I want to be with you in the box too. Can we be two at the same time? We fit in the bed, I snuggle up and we both sleep.
(Translated by Lorina Xiaoyu Hou / 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. 
