I was really afraid of mirrors. There were many in my parents' house and although the light was shining during the day, at night I was actually afraid to pass by them. It thought that, that at any moment I would look,in the darkness, a hideous cynic face would grin back at me from there. I don't know what fairy tale it was coming from. Or maybe it wasn't a faity tale. Maybe the mirror reflected only me with my fear of the unknown with. Now I've grown up and I'm not afraid anymore. If the face appears and grins at me, I stop and smile. That's how easy it is for me to recognize myself.
(Translated by Andreea Denisa Dinu / 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. 
