Come and have a sip of beer. The little girl reaches for the mug. The liquid glows amber-yellow in sunlight and smells pungent. She's happy to be out with daddy, like the boys. Daddy who took her on trips. Daddy who told her it could be better. Daddy who wanted a boy. Daddy who left home in order to have some peace. The father who was everything, even after he was gone. But the time spindle hasn't run yet. A perfect moment is trapped inside that beer mug, like an insect in a piece of amber. The little girl has foam on the tip of her nose.
(Translated by Oana Ionescu / 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. 
