In the sluggish morning mist I was the only one smiling. Be it winter or summer, I opened the shop's shutters with zeal, with a bang even, so that the whole neighbourhood knew that I am there, I had a job. I washed and dusted the granite slabs of the sidewalk, waiting for Mr. Herzl, the owner, a kind man with a gentle heart. One day, he drove up with high speed, stopped the car and dumped a large sum of money in my hand. The family was waiting for him in the car. He hugged me and they were off. He was very elegant, even more so with the yellow star and his salt and pepper suit.
(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. 
