Rumpus Original Fiction: The Things for Which We Have Prayed
In the nursing home, his few lucid days are passed recounting the things he had prayed for as a child. The zookeepers, he cackles. I prayed for the zookeepers.
Fiction
223 posts
Rumpus Original Fiction: A Girl Lost at Sea
Sometimes, she thinks her parents can mute the world.
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."
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 branch.
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…
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.