The child looked up at the world as if seeing it for the first time. He didn't know it would be the last time he'd see it through his own eyes. He heard it like a verdict: Apple. That is an apple. Flower. Dog. Blackbird. With each word, his world died a little bit. You. Human. Me. He then learned to be Human: Good. Bad. Beautiful. Ugly. Happiness. Death. He didn't stop learning: Psychologist. Depression. Anxiety. In old age, he went mad. Words began to flutter away like butterflies. People called him a Poet. He was a child again.
(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. 
