Daily Flash Fiction Challenge

Twilight Vanity

Myrtle giggled and flipped her feather boa over her shoulder as it strayed across the front of her dress. Seated across a quaint wooden dresser, her friend wore the same fabric - and wasn’t it marvelous, like emeralds sewn with diamond thread.

“Oh, Emmy,” sighed Myrtle, “I do miss those nights down on Bourbon in the clubs. Do you know The Tucan down there, right near Jackson?”

“I certainly remember seeing you there!” crowed her friend, “and didn’t you belong.”

Laughing, Myrtle replied “What I wouldn’t give to sing there for a living. What ever do they get on down there these days?”


“Never you mind,” chided her partner, “what they get on to down there these days. Isn’t the thought along just magnificent?”


Myrtle breathed deeply the succulent air, light headed in the beauty of the moment. “Nonsense, Emmy. I don’t ever want to be one of those quiet girls, waiting to overripe. Don’t you think I could sign for a living?” She finished with a flutter of birdsong.

The girl across the table smiled warmly but not with her eyes, which were heavy with knowing. “Yes Myrtle, I’m sure you could. But let’s not talk about the future, such a serious thing.”


“Oh Emmy, I feel like I’ve known you for ages! Haven’t I now?” asked Myrtle, laughing again.

“My dear, my poor, poor dear.” Her smile gone, a single tear drifted down her cheek. For Myrtle this, too, was familiar. “You ask too many questions.”

The reflection in the vanity mirror aged a lifetime, skin emerging cracked and grey. A crooked hand moved slowly up a hospital nightgown to adjust the oxygen line attached to her nostrils. Myrtle sobbed with the slipping of another twilight dream that would never be memory.

295 words.