Flash Fiction/Short Story
Agnes had had dreams of being an actress in late 1920s- early 1930s Hollywood. She had moved from a neighboring state to try to get into the movies. But, although she was undeniably beautiful, those dreams hadn't worked out for her, like many Hollywood dreamers, then and now. So resigned to fate, or half resigned to it, she had married and had a child, and worked low level jobs in the film industry, far away from the beautiful people she had once aspired to join. But it was hard to be the secretary for a minor film studio, when you wanted to be an actress.
Still, life went on, as it does, and Agnes got older, and into her forties. Despite not being able to fulfill her dreams of being an actress, she never saw herself as tragic. She wasn't like Peg Entwhistle who killed herself by jumping from the Hollywoodland sign when she had trouble getting work in Hollywood. It wasn't the be and end all of her life to be in front of the cameras.
Like many people, she didn't like getting older though and into early middle age. She finally had to accept her dreams of being an actress would never come true then. That was hard. But she looked forward to the life that was ahead of her, even if it was to be an ordinary life, not one in front the world.But, even that, sadly was not to be. Agnes died young, or relatively young- she was in her mid 40s. She just dropped dead one day, of an aneurysm. She was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery, in Glendale, near Los Angeles. She had never thought about what cemetery she wanted to be buried at- she was still pretty young. But that was where she was laid to rest.
Since the movies had become popular in the teens of the century, she had been drawn to them, and the people in them. The beautiful people. But in life, she had never really gotten to be around the beautiful people, except from a distance. It was like looking through a window at a party you couldn't join. That was her perspective on it in life.
In death, she finally got to be with the beautiful people. Well, their ghosts anyway. She was buried in a cemetery where many people famous in the movies or the film industry, were buried, Forest Lawn -Glendale. And as the decades went by after her death in the 1940s, more beautiful people joined her at the cemetery. Did she sleep on, unaware that she finally had gotten what she wished for, being with the beautiful people?
On a hillside, her ghost looked over Forest Lawn Cemetery. Agnes looked at her gravestone, and looked down the hill to the road, and beyond to the California hills. It was a still summer day, very hot, decades after her death. But Agnes was happy, if ghosts can be happy. She was smiling. She looked at her neighbors at the cemetery, and finally felt like she was at an eternal party, with the beautiful people.
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