I read it over only once and sign the informed consent form. I waited a lot until it was my turn. I have time to visualize how they'll clumsily dig through my organs, I have time to ask myself anything, several times. In the operating room, I stop. I think of the last clip played on my phone with the Helix nebula converted into sound. The medical hellhounds urge me to count down: 10, 9, 8. I float through the Helix nebula, it's dark in here, like my mom's amniotic fluid. I'm doing good here, really good.
(Translated by Monica-Andreea Gaman / 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. 
