I pressed the traffic light button and stood waiting for it to turn green. Next to me were two bored old dudes, a bunch of rowdy, badly raised teenagers, two blonde actresses heading to a threesome with a director, hoping to land a role, a guy with long hair and an AC/DC t-shirt who never amounted to anything in life, a vulgar drunk with a case of beer, and three art students who will be forever supported by their parents. Across the street, one guy whistled at me, checking out my skirt, and then winked.
(Translated by Andreea Tobă / 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.