Over the years, everyone in my family sat on the bench my old man built. In the backyard of the house from the edge of the village, we got together at least once a year: we collected apples or mushrooms that uncle Floricel then fried on the hob with cheese. My godfather, forest ranger, talked about bears the same way priests talk about God. Nephew, do you see them too? Mișu asked me while looking at my uncle and godfather that were sitting on the bench dressed in white and smoking a cigarette. Mhm, I said. What are you looking at? asked mom. The rainbow, I answered, wiping my eyes.
(Translated by Mălina Ioana Butaru / 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. 
