Rumpus Original Fiction: Three Flash Fictions by Maggie Cooper
Will you join us? When you are ready, lie down to rest.
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Posts Tagged: short story
Rumpus Original Fiction: The Lavaliere
Every monster has a history with another monster.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Basement
Looking back, it feels like I knew.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Any Good Wife
Airong’s voice was stern, matter-of-fact. “I’m pregnant.”
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Rumpus Original Fiction: What Kind of Love Is That?
Nothing in Texas came easy.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: New Hallways, New Doors
Now it is nearly fall, and the baby is small and pink.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: All Good Things Come to an End
I didn’t feel bad about lying because the truth would have hurt her.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Marnie Marie Lit a Match
The only way to guarantee a secret is for the only person to know about it be you.
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Rumpus Exclusive: “Wisdom”
“The devil has made a fool of you, but do you know Wisdom is at work, too?”
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Earth Revolves around the Sun
I imagined myself from the outside: the picture of a woman waiting.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Today, You’re a Black Revolutionary
The important thing to remember when climbing a pole, a rope, a mountain is to not look down.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Lacking World
I acted childishly. But, in my defense, it was childish only if we actually lived in a world where Shakespeare had never existed.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: She Hated the Child
She didn’t want anything to change. She understood it would be easier if she loved the child. But she did not want to love it.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Drink the Wine That Moves You
Were they all just kittens, really, the comfort of their warm blood the only defense between life and a dump in the river?
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Of Birds Alit in Trees
Her name is Selvakumari, but the name catches like a vine in the family’s mouth, comes out bungled and limp. They call her Sally.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Even the Moon
When you finished, several minutes passed before we spoke. You dipped a finger in a pool of candle wax. How could I know this was the only real secret you’d ever kept?
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Handsome Cab
A warm wash of confidence came over me. You don’t really know who you are until you know which car you’re following.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Rebecca
Grace shook her head, surprised by both her reluctance to speak and her impulse to lie. She had seen many photos of Rebecca.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Typhoon is a Hurricane
She tried her best to be clinical, but his dreaming scared her, made her think of ghosts and aswang stealing pieces of her—little bit by little bit.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: No Good
The sounds that she would expect here are entirely absent. There are no cries, no weeping. Just soothing, muffled tones.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Seasonal Work
[T]he thing about Gary was that he could believe what he needed to believed when he needed to believe it. So, technically, he never lied.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: City of Foundlings
What makes him think she’s in any less pain? Because hers isn’t prolonged by uncertainly, isn’t moored by hope.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: My Name Is Jean-Pierre and I Am Still an End Table
I am glad to be free of that tyrant, even if it means I am an end table waddling inch-by-inch down this path on a foolish mission that might prove impossible. I may be an end table, but at least I am free.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Whole World Is Desert
This is what I want him to think of me. The girl poised to surf a wave under the heaviness of the full moon, the ocean around her radiant with light.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Mutual Exploitation
There was a lot one could see about other people, when those people didn’t see them.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Emergency Lifeboats: 24 (12 on Each Side)
“What’s a six-letter word for ignoring truth,” she might say, without looking up from the puzzle.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Zhiyu/Jerry
Here is the genuine article: a young, American man, who expects the things he wants to come quickly, with just a word, a smile. So be it.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Pet Store
The boy is looking for something specific. I can tell. It shows on his face when he scans the shelves and doesn’t find it.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: The Barbecue
Up close, the beach was disgusting and tragic. A million tiny pieces of plastic were heaped on the shore like confetti from a hundred parades, or like the real sand on the beach threw up.
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
This week, a story at Smokelong Quarterly instructs us on how to become a new person. The title of Rebecca Bernard’s story, “How to Be Another Person in Five Days,” plays humorously with the trope of familiar self-help programs and fad diets that promise a “new you” in x amount of time, but the story […]
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