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Fiction

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  • Fiction
  • Rumpus Original

Rumpus Original Fiction: Scale

  • McKenzie Watterson
  • March 14, 2022
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…
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  • Fiction
  • Rumpus Original

From the Archive: Rumpus Original Fiction: On the Last Day, the Ancestors Came

  • Tyrese L. Coleman
  • February 28, 2022
If this were the end, May needed to see.
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  • Fiction
  • Rumpus Original

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Rumpus Original Fiction: Sabbath

  • Arielle K. Jones
  • February 14, 2022
There’s something about stillness that always comes just before the miracles.
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  • Fiction
  • Rumpus Original

Rumpus Original Fiction: Parallax

  • Alanna Weissman
  • January 24, 2022
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…
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  • Fiction
  • Rumpus Original

From the Archive: Rumpus Original Fiction—The Christmas Party

  • Mina Seçkin
  • January 10, 2022
I laugh. My laugh, this thing that sounds better on somebody else.
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  • Fiction
  • Rumpus Original

Rumpus Original Fiction: Self-Possession

  • Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya
  • December 29, 2021
The words blur, become meaningless. You need them to be meaningless.
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  • Fiction
  • Rumpus Original

Rumpus Original Fiction: My Mother Fires Guns

  • Timothy Laurence Marsh
  • December 15, 2021
You are never really at peace with what you haven’t gotten.
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  • Fiction
  • Rumpus Original

Rumpus Original Fiction: What Wasn’t

  • Rachel Lyon
  • November 24, 2021
She gave him a small, relieved laugh. In another world, she replied.
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  • Fiction
  • Rumpus Original

Rumpus Original Fiction: shadowman

  • jj peña
  • November 10, 2021
he lives in closets, stalks young kids, & takes them in the middle of the night.
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  • Fiction
  • Rumpus Original

Rumpus Original Fiction: Being the Baby’s Heart

  • Carly Rae Zent
  • October 27, 2021
I took a deep breath. A long one. And I started rocking again.
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  • Fiction
  • Rumpus Original

Rumpus Original Fiction: On Sight

  • Brian Lin
  • October 13, 2021
You stood and put your hair up. It made you a different man. You got hard and decided you were why.
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  • Fiction
  • Rumpus Original

Rumpus Original Fiction: A Disappointment

  • Cate Fricke
  • September 29, 2021
My miraculous children were mine, and mine alone.
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The Rumpus publishes original fiction, poetry, literary humor writing, comics, essays, book reviews, and interviews with authors and artists of all kinds. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers our readers may already know and love. We want to bring new perspectives into the conversation that will make us all look deeper.

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