I was finely dicing some red cabbage. I was about to blanch the asparagus. To deglaze an onion with some brandy. Poetry in the kitchen, I though as I was placing some rosé in the fridge. I should put some soul in this food as well, so they'd lick their fingers. I searched for a gram of soul, a kernel, a grain. Nothing. Empty jars, messy drawers, cobwebs. I'll fry a cutlet as well, just to make sure everything's mouth-watering. That's enough for now. Then, we'll see.
(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. 
