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
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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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Anniversary
There lay her gift, basking in the sunlight. A gray-green lizard the size of a shoe. It stood so still she thought it was fake.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Bellevonia Beautee
I try to see it, to see forever. The backs of my eyes are hot and ache with the trying.
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Sunday Rumpus Fiction: Quietly the Flood
If anyone was old pals it was Leona and the house. Was she friends with a house?
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Maybe There’s This Dragon?
Maybe I’ve been here too long. Maybe I’ve finally accepted that the apartment is somehow aspirational. Maybe there’s this dragon.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Summer of Families
“What do you think about this,” he said, measured and cool. “What if we offer a service where people can pay to be in our family, but only for a few hours.”
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Bob and Dave
The threat of perfunctory conversation looms. Raza reaches for his headphones, but it is too late. The man is already talking to him.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Salt
A flash-fire covered the horizon all around and behind her, and my mother glowed genuine blue. I saw her skeleton, or maybe her white-hot soul. Something flew up and around our heads.
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Sunday Rumpus Fiction: One Small Victory
Now he started to cry and couldn’t stop the tears. He’d found a way to beat his hunger until the next meal, and he didn’t know when that would be. Hunger, his acts from hunger, made him cry.
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