I followed a lone warrior who had no enemy incarnate, fighting with himself, tearing himself from his own flesh, in shreds, meaning after meaning. I was glued to him, the harder he fought, the higher I raised my shield. One day I found myself alone, a shadow stretched across the sand, for my man had dissipated into his own light. I clung fast to another shadow, of a tan-shouldered girl running slowly toward the sea. You know my man found himself, I cried desperately in longing, but the shadow flung itself indifferently into the waves, along with her girl.
(Translated by Andreea Ciubuc / 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. 
