I knew master Rafael since I was little. A boar's bone, he walked with his hands clasped behind his back, with patent leather shoes and a hat. I used to pass by his houses every day and see him reading, tending roses or puffing his pipe, with the same elegance as if he had never have bad habits like scratching or sitting on a throne. Since he's been left alone, Raphael wanders the alley with his mind wandering, dragging a leash behind him. He takes off his hat, calls himself Cronos, and he said he walks his man pet.
(Translated by Cristina-Nicoleta Costache (Mircea) / 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. 
