Humble, his shoulders slightly hunched under the weight of the enormous talent he carries, he is up the stage. He looks at us grimly over his round glasses. Emotion completes the moment. I, a woman in the third row, curled up in the red velvet armchair, forget to breathe. His lively gaze flies across the silent hall and settles upon my left eyelid. He, a blind man who sees through me, smiles. He hands me the cane. My soul turns greedily to white, stepping into the most amazing and vivid story. Hats off to Horațiu Mălăele.
(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. 
