For the People Below Her

Five Sentence Fiction is a weekly blog link-up based on a word prompt. The Challenge – write a complete story in five sentences. There is no word count limit, or any restriction on sentence length (proper grammar notwithstanding). This challenge is hosted weekly by Lillie McFerrin. The word of this week is Luminous.

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Once deemed the brightest beacon of talent in three generations, the only thing that continues to shine for Marilyn O’Brian Sibley Burns vanWieren are the diamonds on her fingers, though even those steadily decrease in both size and sparkle, and the lights of Times Square below her eighth-floor hovel. Daily, she passes her hours performing for her audience: pedestrians pondering lunch meetings, cocktail hour, and dinner selections, unaware of her existence, then and still. Occasionally she sets up the picture frames showcasing her line of still-famous ex-husbands–talking to each as if animate. Weekly, a daughter she doesn’t recognize comes in to scrub the tub, toilet, and counter-tops, vacuum, fill the refrigerator with goods from the Bodega on the first floor, and toss the piles of credit card offers and unread newspapers in the trashcan, brimming with bottles, never abandoning the woman who once abandoned her. Nightly, John Barrymore tucks her in, kisses her hand, and, while sipping a tumbler of single malt, recites the soliloquies of Hamlet.

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Five sentences – can you do it? Why not try! When you’re finished, add your story to the Linky link, and read and enjoy other’s five sentence stories.

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*Featured Image – Copyright: WritingInBoots – Margarita, 3 July 2014

**Unsolicited Promotion: I absolutely adore The Bitter Southerner. Every Tuesday is Bitter Tuesday, and a new story is published from the South about the South showcasing a Southern artist–writer, photographer, videographer. The Bitter Southerner shows that the depth and breadth of Southern Art is equal to that of the music of the Pacific Northeast, the fashion of Hollywood, the paintings of the Midwest Plains, the writings of New York. And they’re establishing a proper business, asking folks from all over to #yallcome and join them in their new venture. Please consider a donation, if you can.

****The ads (which may appear) below are not mine, but they keep this free for me. Do with them as you choose.