I made you, I kill you. A couple of times you almost did, mom. The last time you hit me was when you were already very sick, humiliated me, with witnesses, even on the night before you died. After years of therapy, I understand the theory, but I no longer believe in healing. If you couldn't love me, mom, how can I love myself? You burned me irreversibly. I could have become, well, not a hawk, but at least a lark, a finch, something. The son of your abuses, I am today a disproportionate kiwi, with small, useless, burnt wings.
(Translated by Alina-Dorina Nicolae / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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 June 2023, the group has 11,430 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.