When they got back from the cemetery, they each settled in front of their computers and they both did the same thing. They recreated the little girl in the form of an avatar just as beautiful as the recordings they had of her. They engaged in frighteningly realistic conversations. The years passed and they grew older. I'm tired of lying to myself, said the mother. I want to see if it's her. Where are you now? I'm right in front of you, the child replied. She pressed delete and erased everything off the storage. She told me not to cry. She's not leaving; she's returning inside of me. It's dark, but she can hear our voices and is lulled to sleep by their sound.
(Translated by Lucia-Alexandra Brînaru-Mitrofan / 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. 
