I sneak peeks at my husband and sip on my cocktail. He is making polite conversation with the man sitting next to him, but his hand is sliding up the thigh of the woman on his left. On the stage, Diva, a sensual blonde with a voice like Callas' and legs like Nadia Auermann's, is finishing her performance. The crowd erupts into applause. I can't take this anymore. I'm going to the bathroom, I whisper to my husband. I fumble around in the dim light and the thick smoke in the hallways leading to the cabins. I go in, pull the dress over my head and hear the voice that gives me shivers: don't take off your shoes. I jump into her arms. The blonde wig falls off the chair.
(Translated by Diana Mîndruță-Tănăsescu / 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. 
