The sense of accomplishment grew in him with every second he gained each day he fell deeper. When he ended up underwater for hours without breathing, he realized he could no longer move his legs. They were stick to one another. His toes had turned into flippers. He was jumping around. When his penis shrank to the point that he forgot he ever had it, he knew there was no need to go back to land. He was happy. He was so rocked and hugged, he didn't feel the fishermen's cast nets tighten around him.
(Translated by Luciana-Maria Buruiană / 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. 
