Fiction
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Sentences
” . . . I’m pretending to be a student for the sake of a thought experiment I’m trying to disguise as a story so it has a better chance of getting read. Also, I look young.”
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Rumpus Original Fiction: A Hundred Orbits
Anoushka reaches for my dresser, too close to the Prednisone prescription. If she accidentally flips it over, I’ll have to tell the truth. She picks up two matching earrings: long ones with black jewels that could be grapes on a…
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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 I asked if you, a fellow bookmaker, if you wanted…
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Wherever, Anyplace
For a while, at least, we were safe. The end is the beginning, the beginning is the end.
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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…
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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…
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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 menstrual discovery. They trace red, which soaks into the skin…
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From the Archive: Rumpus Original Fiction: On the Last Day, the Ancestors Came
If this were the end, May needed to see.
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FROM THE ARCHIVES: Rumpus Original Fiction: Sabbath
There’s something about stillness that always comes just before the miracles.
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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 leg toward the water, I saw a new striation of…
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From the Archive: Rumpus Original Fiction—The Christmas Party
I laugh. My laugh, this thing that sounds better on somebody else.
