I take my dog for a walk. Every day, from 6 to 8 pm. I go to the boutique in the corner, downstairs. Blonde Cecilia, the saleswoman, is waiting for me. She puts the poster with I'll be back immediately for two hours. I take advantage as much as I can, at this rate the boutique will soon go bankrupt. Today, Cecilia has a cold. I'll take the dog out later. My wife is in the bathroom, I don't know what's taking so long. I'm sitting on the couch. Her phone is ringing. I can read the message until the phone crashes. My brain is blurring: Honey, can I come? Did that sucker take the dog for a walk?
(Translated by Andreea Theodora Drăgan / 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 May 2023, the group has 11,260 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. 
