He'd go back three times to check the stove and the iron. He would put on and then take off his clothes three times. At different times of the day she would perform, in threes, mindless movements and there was no stopping her. She set the alarm at three so she could take three showers and wash her clothes in three loads. She'd put three ladles of soup on her plate, then three more spoons, three times. He suffered in silent, wracked with agony. That she was in one piece. Until he disappeared from home. Three months. Then he was no more.
(Translated by Cristina Ioana Bontea / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / 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. 
