Gheorghe went up the stairs holding a huge bouquet of flowers. He stopped at the last floor. He took one deep breath and knocked on the door. He could hear steps on the other side. When Ildiko opened the door, he held out the flowers. For the 8th of March, he mumbled in a low voice.The woman gave him a hard stare. Yesterday you come drunk. You vant drink coffee wid me. He lowered his gaze, ashamed. I prepare a cup wid lot of sugar the vay you like, but you fall asleep in the kitchen wid head on table. The man sighed. She took the flowers and slammed the door in his face.
(Translated by Ruxandra Adriana Dodoiu / 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. 
