I rest my elbows on this huge canvas right where the painter signs when he's proud of his art. He'll think there were two of us. My paints had dried while waiting for this inspiration whore. Because I hadn't paid her in advance. Proudly. I thrust my rough palms into green and yellow and use my forehead as a grater. Leather shavings tanned in pastel. Intentionally knocking over a wine carafe on the canvas with my right elbow. A quarter of it. I even spit on it with disdain. Finally. I pick up the brush.
(Translated by Beatrice-Ioana Huruială / 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. 
