It all started that morning. As I stepped out of the house, I realized that something bizarre was happening. I encountered only men carrying shopping bags or pushing strollers with crying children. I could only see men watering the flowers or shaking out bedsheets from the balconies of the apartment buildings. It was too much of a coincidence. I reached the boulevard. A cacophony of honking horns. Only women were driving. A female driver called out to me, hey, pooch. I didn't dare respond with, yes, kitten. That morning, the matriarchy began.
(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. 
