Fiction
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Rumpus Original Fiction: You Are One of Them
Everyone here is new. Everyone has run away from somewhere.
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From the Archive: Rumpus Original Fiction: An Other Man
This is a carousel that never slows to a point where you can board gracefully.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: When Will You Arrive?
We do not have lovers, if so there would not be need to reply or congregate to these stupid events, because the language of two people together is the exclusionary body of themselves. In the absence of a body, we…
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Black Bottom Swamp Bottle Woman
. . . maybe they believe labeling and understanding mean the same thing . . .
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Rumpus Original Fiction: To Go
Love can feel muddled, vast, diffuse; so little to do with the singular volatility of a firework. I hunger for that kind of crystalline precision, though. That clarity. To scream myself across the sky just once—consuming everything in my wake—and…
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Only Humans
Hearing old people’s memories is like watching a once-in-three-generations downpour. In the past, they lived in abundance and air conditioning. So many details go over Salwa’s head. She doesn’t know how to transcribe all the words.
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From the Archive: Rumpus Original Fiction: Forty-Six
Waiting to turn forty-six is like standing in the unrelenting sunshine.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Mycomorphosis
“Everything looks good,” the neurologist said. The hairs on his head, she couldn’t help noticing, resembled plump white beansprouts—they stood from his scalp as if fat with water. His fingers too. “The only thing is that you have extra fungus…
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Breaking Through
I read somewhere that sounds don’t stop, they keep going all the way into deep space, reflecting off whatever might be in the way and speeding infinitely on. My head feels like deep space, and those voices haven’t even begun…
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Genesis
The speed boat moves fast and Genesis notices Kayla’s hair keeps getting into her eyes. She laughs, as do all the others, who bounce up and down and let out high-pitched screams each time the boat rides a wave up…
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From the Archive: Rumpus Original Fiction: Footnotes on a love story
Before they were married, they met in a photograph.
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From the Archive: 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.