The knock on the door had been soft and didn't wake the dog. When I opened the door, there stood Mihai, shivering with his clothes drenched, in the middle of the night. After having sat in front of the fireplace with new dry clothes, he says check this out. Ana had sent me for bread and then I somehow ended up at a river and since I didn't see a bridge, I started swimming because there was this dark pit behind. Then a guy showed up with this big dog, saying I need to get out because he's going to help me cross with his boat. He stretches his hand out, but to my demise, I forgot the coin in the Lidl shopping cart. You know what, I'm not going to cross anymore, I'll do it some other time. Alright Mihai, help yourself to some mulled wine.
(Translated by Marta Fulga / 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. 
