Each night, various monsters kept coming out from under my bed. Out of the dark. Giant spiders were hanging on huge webs and naughty ghosts were playing with my dolls. I was curled up in bed with the duvet pulled over my head. I dug my nails into my palms until I fell asleep. I'm a grown woman now. I got rid of the monsters, and instead I gained some inhibitions. I only make love with the light off and the curtains drawn, in complete darkness. I am no longer afraid of the dark. I'm scared of the light.
(Translated by Diana Pașcanu / 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. 
