“Beautiful, Brilliant, and Clueless,” Annie Flash Fiction by Jeff Posey

Coming in 2013

A flash fiction piece in preparation for the novel-in-progress Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi, by Jeff Posey, set in the year 2054. Sign up for notification by email here.

Theo stepped up from the basement safe house into the warm January night air. Another winter without a freeze, looked like.

He let his eyes adjust and saw a hulking dark shadow under a tree.

“Arch?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

“Over here,” Arch said. Theo had the wrong dark shadow. Archibald was on the other side of the tree. Theo walked to him.

“Everything good?” he asked.

“So far. You?”

“I guess.”

“Problem?”

“That damn girl,” said Theo. “Brilliant. Beautiful. And clueless. She’s got no idea what’s going on in the world.”

Archibald shifted in the darkness and sighed through his nose. “She finding out pretty good, though, seem like.”

“Well, her daddy was leading some kind of rebellion among scientists and engineers and such, and she didn’t even know. What the hell kind of upbringing is that?”

“My daddy got beat by people with sheets on they heads. I didn’t know until he gone five year.”

“Well, hell,” said Theo. He couldn’t possibly hope Arch would understand the problems he saw with Annie. But Arch certainly knew things even Theo would never truly understand. “Something’s happening out there, that’s all I’m saying. Can’t stay like this. How long has the likes of us been saying that? And she could step up and do something about it, but she doesn’t look the least bit up to it. That’s all I’m saying.”

“She in shock.”

“I know that,” he snapped. Felt bad for treating Arch this way. “I don’t mean to fight with you. But dammit. They ruin my Centipede Section, kill my buddies, wipe out your whole neighborhood, and kill nearly all your family and friends, all on a trumped-up charge against Annie that doesn’t make any sense.”

“I hear they say she dead. They kill her after she shoot Reagan Newcastle in the arm.”

“That’s right. So see how perfect it is? How embarrassed they’d be if Annie turned out to still be alive? And that she really is leading an uprising? They’d shake in their boots. And people like you and me would fight back with everything we’ve got.”

“Maybe,” said Archibald. “But maybe that give them more reason to keep killing folks they don’t like.”

“They don’t need any reason to do that. They need a reason to stop. To be scared. To know we’re not going to take it anymore.”

“What we going to fight with, Mr. Theo? They got guns and flying machines. We got rocks and sticks. Like when white men first fight black men in Africa. We ain’t got not chance.”

“There’s got to be something we can do. We can’t outrun them. Even if we could, who would we have to leave behind? How many wouldn’t be able to keep up?”

The night air stirred and the smell of fungus-laced dry-rotted wood wafted past them.

“So what you think she ought to do, then? She already try a shot at Newcastle, and blow him up too. What else she can do?”

“Oh, hell, I don’t know. I’m just frustrated, I guess. And antsy. They’re going to find us here. I feel it.”

“We slow ’em down for you.”

“I know. I know you will. But I sure would rather take the fight to them. Wouldn’t you?”

Archibald laughed, deep and slow. “Naw. They kill us all, sure. Best thing’s to keep ’em guessing. Surprise ’em time to time. Miss Annie ain’t gonna quit. You see her on that push bar on the train. You know what she got in her. She gonna be all right.”

“I hope so. Maybe you’re right. Poor girl doesn’t hardly trust anybody. Doesn’t even think about getting help. Stubborn as a donkey.”

“She don’t need to think about help. Just need to do what she do, and they be all kind of people like me stand up for her. You see.”

Theo sighed. Maybe Arch was right. Patience never had been something Theo practiced much. “Well,” he said, “I just hope she hurries up and figures her own head out. This places gives me the willies.”

“Ain’t no place safe. This probably ain’t so bad.”

“I guess. Just keep a good watch.”

“Now you the one don’t trust nobody.”

Theo grinned and chuckled. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m worse than she is.”

“It gonna be alright, Mr. Theo. You go get some sleep. Tomorrow bring what it bring, ain’t no worryin’ gonna change it a bit.”

 

Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi, set in 2054 A.D., is about a migration of intellectuals into the deserts of New Mexico where people live like the ancient ones because of changing climate coupled with an intolerable mix of politics and religion that rises in the cities of the American South. Annie is the daughter of Tucker and Lydia Roth of Girl on a Rock. Theo is the son of Sean O’Brien from the novel Anasazi Runner and a significant character in Ellipsis.

Cover art for Ellipsis: Annie and the Second Anasazi is by Derek Murphy of Creativeindie Covers.