Jack the Pirate is sad. Almost all of his boats have sunk, except for one. He has no money to pay his crew. There he is, sitting by the window at the tavern, drinking a cider. And then another one. And then he sees her. Her golden boots are worth as much as his whole ship. He takes off his pirate hat and takes a deep bow in front of the lady. He introduces himself. Her eyes grow big with awe, after which she gestures at him to follow her. It's so cool that perfumed young ladies like tough guys, Jack thinks. The next day, his dark ship sails amongst the waves once more.
(Translated by Carla Bețianu / 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 April 2023, the group has 11,000 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. 
