That's where you'll find him, says the traffic controller and shows me the dive bar at the end of the platform. 9 a.m., the only customer. I sit at the greasy table while he's smoking a Mărășești cigarette. What do you want? I don't even get the chance to open my mouth. Buy me a coffee and I'll tell you all about it. I wave the man on the counter for coffee and booze. No, I say, I want to know how to get in the Zone. That's not a thing coffee can buy, he grins his two teeth at me. I put the stack of money next to him. I especially want to know how to get out. Look, and he shows me his severed legs, I left them in the Zone. What are you willing to lose?
(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. 
