Rumpus Original Fiction: All Good Things Come to an End
I didn’t feel bad about lying because the truth would have hurt her.
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Rumpus Original Fiction
Rumpus Original Fiction: Marnie Marie Lit a Match
The only way to guarantee a secret is for the only person to know about it be you.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Earth Revolves around the Sun
I imagined myself from the outside: the picture of a woman waiting.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Today, You’re a Black Revolutionary
The important thing to remember when climbing a pole, a rope, a mountain is to not look down.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Lacking World
I acted childishly. But, in my defense, it was childish only if we actually lived in a world where Shakespeare had never existed.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: She Hated the Child
She didn’t want anything to change. She understood it would be easier if she loved the child. But she did not want to love it.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: RememberYou
They had begun studying memory hoping to find a cure for Alzheimer’s, the doctor explains. But instead, they found other results.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Drink the Wine That Moves You
Were they all just kittens, really, the comfort of their warm blood the only defense between life and a dump in the river?
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Of Birds Alit in Trees
Her name is Selvakumari, but the name catches like a vine in the family’s mouth, comes out bungled and limp. They call her Sally.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Even the Moon
When you finished, several minutes passed before we spoke. You dipped a finger in a pool of candle wax. How could I know this was the only real secret you’d ever kept?
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Handsome Cab
A warm wash of confidence came over me. You don’t really know who you are until you know which car you’re following.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Rebecca
Grace shook her head, surprised by both her reluctance to speak and her impulse to lie. She had seen many photos of Rebecca.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Typhoon is a Hurricane
She tried her best to be clinical, but his dreaming scared her, made her think of ghosts and aswang stealing pieces of her—little bit by little bit.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: One of Them Dies
We seldom forget when people promise to give us something, whether we need or want that thing or not. I promise you death, you want a death.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Earthworms
In one dream, I was naked and they crawled inside my belly button. I felt them wiggling inside my stomach. When I woke up, the place between my legs was damp.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: No Good
The sounds that she would expect here are entirely absent. There are no cries, no weeping. Just soothing, muffled tones.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Seasonal Work
[T]he thing about Gary was that he could believe what he needed to believed when he needed to believe it. So, technically, he never lied.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: City of Foundlings
What makes him think she’s in any less pain? Because hers isn’t prolonged by uncertainly, isn’t moored by hope.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Prescriptions
I wore sobriety like a shirt that was too tight in the shoulders, and everyone around me knew it.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: My Name Is Jean-Pierre and I Am Still an End Table
I am glad to be free of that tyrant, even if it means I am an end table waddling inch-by-inch down this path on a foolish mission that might prove impossible. I may be an end table, but at least I am free.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Whole World Is Desert
This is what I want him to think of me. The girl poised to surf a wave under the heaviness of the full moon, the ocean around her radiant with light.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Mutual Exploitation
There was a lot one could see about other people, when those people didn’t see them.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Emergency Lifeboats: 24 (12 on Each Side)
“What’s a six-letter word for ignoring truth,” she might say, without looking up from the puzzle.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Zhiyu/Jerry
Here is the genuine article: a young, American man, who expects the things he wants to come quickly, with just a word, a smile. So be it.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Pet Store
The boy is looking for something specific. I can tell. It shows on his face when he scans the shelves and doesn’t find it.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Barbecue
Up close, the beach was disgusting and tragic. A million tiny pieces of plastic were heaped on the shore like confetti from a hundred parades, or like the real sand on the beach threw up.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Grace
After the anger came a deep, resigned sadness, as if her cruise were canceled at the last minute. She’s stuck on the shore of her life, watching everyone she loves sail into the distance.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Mustard Seeds
At the end of the week, which was long with sleepless nights, Miri picked her heart out of the kitchen sink, put it in a paper lunch bag, and took it to the witch.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Day of the Dead
Octavio is tired, tired of trying to separate what he remembers so vividly from the memories he can barely make out in the fog.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Straw House
“It’s not healthy, how you live. People aren’t meant to sleep all day. We need the sun. We’re meant to live in the sun.”
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