For quite some time I didn't even know they existed. Then, more and more people around me started talking about them and seeing them. They are long, they said, grey, they seem like some foolish people, they appear when you least expect it and they follow you all the time. That what they said with their eyes popping out of their sockets in astonishment. One day, at a crossroads I saw one stretching itself in front of me. As big as a day of fasting. I thought it was grinning. Be goooone, I yelled at it. Before I closed my mouth, it went away. With all the light after it.
(Translated by Jessica-Polixenia-Cristiana Copilaș / 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. 
