The old man cut out a hefty slice of bread and greased it up with Mangalița pork lard. He sprinkled some salt and pepper over it, munching on it voraciously. After the first bite, his phone started ringing. The GP let him know that after the last set of investigations, his triglycerides came up too high. He began to weep. He had to completely give up Mangalița and eat only fish. How could he not eat pork? He took the mackerel can out of the fridge and opened it. With tears in his eyes, he put the mackerel over the lard and kept eating.
(Translated by Constantin Istrate / 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. 
