“If you abide in my word, you’re my disciple.”

Carmen had heard these words most of her life since they had been uttered after every transgression large or small; there was never a good reason to disobey Him, for if she did, hell would be the result, and who in their right mind would want that?

Bryson had escaped such tormenting guilt by only pretending to believe, so the threat of hell made him laugh inside since he knew that if there was actually such a place, he would be the rare kind of person to truly enjoy it, which made perfect sense; heat had never bothered her brother one iota.

“Jump, Bryson, jump now while you still can, while we still have the chance to do this together!”

But he wouldn’t budge, having accepted Christ the day before and vowing to change his recalcitrant ways, so she kissed him gently on the forehead and jumped off the edge of the window and down six feet into the impatiently idling van filled with giddy young adults heading out to Burning Man.

This week’s five sentences were inspired by Lillie McFerrin’s prompt: edge

Their love had come mid-life, after both of them had experienced enough joy and enough hardship to know what they wanted; to know that this kind of love usually only happened once, and that they had found it in each other. There were those who shunned them for dismantling two lives that seemed, from the outside, to be perfect, but they didn’t care. Each day they burnished their love by nurturing each other with their time, their devotion, their affection, and their passion, refusing to be apart more than was absolutely necessary.

It was true that they got little sleep, so interested in talking and touching each evening that they lost track of time and found that morning came shortly after they had reluctantly closed their eyes. It came as no surprise to their closest friends; those who had stuck by their sides through it all, when Robert took his last breath at the exact moment that Sophie uttered the last words that she would ever speak: I love you Robert; see you soon.

Five Sentence Fiction, the brainchild of Lillie McFerrin, offered up “words” as this week’s prompt. Click on the icon below to read more Five Sentence Fiction entries: