For six months now I have been a captive in this dirty, suffocating and dangerous city. I sneak under its decrepit walls, careful about a tile or a piece of plaster to not drop on my head. Not careful enough, since I step in dog turd. Ambulance sirens drive me crazy. Where should I hide? I don't have a choice. I sink deep into the fetid womb of the beast. Maybe, sick of her own mess, she'll throw me up eventually. Will I still find apple trees and lilacs in bloom at Nucondo?
(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. 
