They told me every day that I wasn't well. To get over it. That life is pink and dozens of women are waiting to dance with me. I was silent with a worn-out smile on my lips but my heart was sobbing and my mind was screaming. I accepted therapy to shut them up. I locked you behind the forged door. And I padlocked it. But life's grey and the road's tar and I can't dance. I'm dragging my right foot after my left. My stiff arms can't hold anyone in a pirouette. I'm stretching out my hand. The key cuts into the flesh, leaves blood. I open the lock. I'm holding you. I swallow the key.
(Translated by Angelica Ioana Curcan / 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. 
