The sign read bad dog, but it had never seemed to be that way to him. He'd pass by the front yard ever since she was alive, heading home to find her. The dog cheerfully accompanied him along the fence, as though it understood his joy. Then she died, and he started drinking; the dog began growling at him as he passed by. One evening, he stumbled in front of the unlocked gate and found himself in the backyard with the dog lunging at him. Astonished by his own clumsiness, he tried to speak to the dog, as usual; only a syllable came from his throat as he was choking on blood.
(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. 
