When I showed them the footage, most of them thought they were seeing a bad movie, unbelievable footage, with normal people playing absurd roles. When Gicu Bălaiul stood in front of the wood trucks, the first driver got out followed by the others. What do you want, lad, don't you have little ones at home? Don't they go to school; don't they need a lunch box when they go to school? Don't you have your own problems to worry about or do you want to cause us troubles? We are trying to survive some way or another. Think about your children too, don't we all live here? It is not about this. You're wrong, that's what it's all about, lad.
(Translated by Andreea Laura Stanca / 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. 
