Flash Fiction

She danced. She danced and no one knew her name, so we called her Mad Annie.

She never danced in the rain only ever in the road. In the face of all that was oncoming her only ally was a toy plane, which she twirled above her head as if it were a baton. The traffic slowed to go around her. She danced with the cars. The sounds in her head were the ratatat tat of the machine guns. The paradiddle of the percussion section gave her the beat and the hooting horns gave her the satisfaction. She looked to the sky to see the planes and she could always see one, her own at the very least.

When the planes gunned her down in warm blood she lay down in the road and the cars still went around. When the figures of authority arrived, she stayed down. And the sirens that took her away gave her even more of the satisfaction she craved.