He never barked. People in the town said that it was a bad omen. Resigned, he would pass on the sidewalk, occasionally stopping at some house or other. He would give it ablank glance, his posture sad. If the door wasn't open, he wouldn't enter; he'd keep walkingon his worn-out path, much like his soul. One day, he came across a gate so tall that it reached beyond the clouds; it was slightly ajar. In the strong light that emanated from beyond, he saw all his dreams which he had never barked out loud. He sat down wearily. The locals found him in the back of the cemetery, with his eyes open, smiling.
(Translated by Lucia-Alexandra Brînaru-Mitrofan / 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. 
