Excerpt from Issue 307 (Spring 2026)
"The Jump" by Abhimanyu Acharya
Content Warning: deals with sexual assault
When Kevin said, “Jump!” I was already in the air. Before jumping, I had mechanically stretched my black-and-grey swimsuit to hide my butt cheeks, drawn in a lungful of air, and stared at the greenish blue of the water for what seemed like a flicker of a second. Then I jumped, only to realize that I should have waited for Kevin’s signal first. Water splashed sideways, clearing the way for me. I could feel the chlorine in my nose, my ears, my tongue. The taste of purified water. I had the sudden urge to gulp some of it, but I stopped myself. I knew that in a few minutes, I would struggle to breathe. The anticipation of suffocation took me back to when I was thirteen, when Karthik Anna fingered me while placing his huge, dark hands on my mouth, not letting me breathe. Not a word, not a whimper. I wanted to die so badly, then. Slowly, as I grew older, the intensity of the desire to die mellowed, along with the intensity of the desire to live. I reached a point where I was okay, either way, and thought it was best if both living and dying could happen without much of my intervention.
When Kevin said, “Jump!” I was annoyed at myself. I had the chance to get an advantage. I could have covered my butt cheeks, stared at the water, filled my lungs with air after Kevin said, “Jump.” I could have taken in the atmosphere of the pool. It was an ungodly hour in the middle of the night, and the pool was empty, except for the two of us. We could hear the slow hum of the HVAC system, which soon became the rhythm of silence. I could have taken it all in! But I foolishly lost an advantage of a few seconds. I needed to be in the water longer than Kevin to secure a win, to even the score. Kevin was ahead. He had won the first time, soon after we got married, almost a year ago. We had gone rock climbing in a gym near Richmond Street, some thirty minutes from where we lived. Kevin reached the top fifteen seconds faster than I did. Later, he beat me in cycling and then in weightlifting, an activity he suggested, knowing he was better at it. I bounced back by beating him in running and in Pilates. And now, here we were, trying out a new sport, testing who could stay underwater longer. His time was two minutes, twenty-nine seconds.
When Kevin said, “Jump,” I realized it was not the first time that I had jumped early, for jumping early came easily to me. While I practised jump rope, I always fell because I jumped too soon, before the rope came back full circle; I jumped on the future, while the present was still not past; I jumped on things that would be eventually mine, while they were still not mine; I jumped to tell Karthik Anna that I was not going to mention the incident, even before he warned me not to; I jumped on the idea of marriage, before my parents even asked me to; I jumped early because I thought it was the jump that mattered and not when or how you did it.
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— Abhimanyu Acharya is a fiction writer, playwright, and scholar. He has previously taught creative writing at the University of Toronto and King’s University College. He won the fiction writing contest at Eden Mills Writers’ Festival 2024 and was longlisted for the Ex-Puritan’s Austin Clarke Prize (fiction). He currently works at McMaster University.
You can read the rest of "The Jump" in Issue 307 (Spring 2026). Order the issue now!
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