Rumpus Original Fiction: You’re Not Going to Believe This
Everyone already thinks I love you so no one will believe the situation in which we find ourselves, orchestrated by me, is an accident. At first it made sense. When…
Fiction
230 posts
Rumpus Original Fiction: Wherever, Anyplace
For a while, at least, we were safe. The end is the beginning, the beginning is the end.
Rumpus Original Fiction: Nacho
The benign lipoma floated in a small jar that Abundio had set on his nightstand when he came back from the doctor’s office. At first, when Dr. Reyes had asked him if he would like to bring it home, Abundio had laughed in the belief that this was nothing more than obtuse doctor humor. But Dr. Reyes did not smile and waited for a response to her question. So, Abundio said: “Sure.”
Rumpus Original Fiction: Inheritance
When she was seven years old, Lottie killed her first rattlesnake. As long as she could remember, her grandfather had instilled in her that The Good Californian killed the rattlesnake, spared those behind him the danger of snakebite, the venom sapped from their future. She thought it was allegory until she came face-to-Western-face with a Mojave rattlesnake in the scrub out by the foothills.
Rumpus Original Fiction: Scale
With my first blood, a scale appears, hard and iridescent in the soft skin below my arm. In bathroom mirror light, elbow raised, I press and prod, fingertips rusted from…
From the Archive: Rumpus Original Fiction: On the Last Day, the Ancestors Came
If this were the end, May needed to see.
FROM THE ARCHIVES: Rumpus Original Fiction: Sabbath
There’s something about stillness that always comes just before the miracles.
Rumpus Original Fiction: Parallax
Summer was ending, and my sister was shrinking. I first noticed when we were sitting on the dock near the lake at our summer camp; as she stretched her bare…
From the Archive: Rumpus Original Fiction—The Christmas Party
I laugh. My laugh, this thing that sounds better on somebody else.
Rumpus Original Fiction: Self-Possession
The words blur, become meaningless. You need them to be meaningless.
Rumpus Original Fiction: My Mother Fires Guns
You are never really at peace with what you haven’t gotten.
Rumpus Original Fiction: What Wasn’t
She gave him a small, relieved laugh. In another world, she replied.