Marco Polo disembarked lively in the venetian port Pellestrina. He was in a rush to get to the Piazetta San Marco, where, between the two marble columns, the one with the bronze winged lion of Saint Marcus and the one of Saint Theodore, a public flogging was taking place. In chains, on her knees, a beautiful venetian with copper hair, long dow to the pavement, was trembling, waiting for the first hit. I'll pay for her, so you'll release her to me, shouted the young pilgrim. I offer a pouch of salt and one of pepper.
(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. 
