He put a shot of espresso in the cup. He pours milk slowly and watches as the milk draws chaotic arabesques in the coffee. With a spoon he stirs the mixture, hysterically, until the vortex formed flushes the liquid from the mug. Ever since they announced Ana's cardiac arrest, he's been replaying their last moment together. They say nothing. He watched her then as she hastily stirred in the mug. Now the swirl of coffee projects every memory he has of her, like a kaleidoscope. Her lips twitch, she says something to him, but he can't hear it.
(Translated by Cătălina Colibaba / 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. 
