I was on the train with my grandmother, coming from Bucharest, I was guarding my bulging suitcase and I couldn't wait to get home. I was starting kindergarten again after spending Christmas with my parents in the city where I was starting school soon. I had a lump in my throat, I didn't want to live in the block that scared me, nor in the shared room with a sister who didn't play with me, and there was no way I could take my grandparents'yard there. I dozed off thinking about the hidden doll, stolen from my sister. She never forgave me, and the little girl in me is still carrying her luggage between two worlds.
(Translated by Alin-Marian Mărgescu / 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. 
