He walks hunched avoiding puddles. The bag fluttered in his hand. Children are playing football among the blocks; a neighbour shouts for her kid from the balcony, the militiaman from floor two is cleaning the carpets. The stairwell smells of piss. He is going to the first floor, he is pushing the door. Mia is in the kitchen. Her white face is like the tiles on the wall. They had no meat. She shrugs. Do you want some soup? He doesn't answer. He goes to the window and throws himself into the void. He opens his eyes, gropes himself. He didn't die. He's in a big square, rows and rows of people are watching him. Yo, who is this?
(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. 
