This is the 1st
John
Everyone knows what happened.
It was almost 12:30 that cloudless afternoon, typically November in Dallas. Cool but sunny. A slight breeze tickled the closely cropped grass. DealeyPlaza was sprinkled with little splats of color. A woman in a bright red coat, fidgeting with a Polaroid camera. A man po-going a black umbrella up and down. (Was it a signal?) Myriad of milling people, peering back, waiting for the motorcade. If you cared to look, you saw one man standing on a pergola, with a movie camera, a woman behind him to steady him. Some of the windows in the buildings surrounding the Plaza were jammed with people. Then, motorcycles, their engines chuffing, rounded the corner from Main Street, slowed to a snail's pace. The big Lincoln limo lumbered out, snaking its way around the corner, then glided left at the next block, slowly heading toward the triple underpass. Nothing out of the ordinary that day. Except...
I woke up. I always did, as soon as the 3 shots rang out. Or was it 4? Or was it just an echo? Whatever it was, I lived it as if I'd actually been there. I sensed the shock and terror on that grassy knoll. I could read the looks of the people huddled as far into the grass as they could go, the parents protecting their children. I'd been miles away, at the TradeCenter when it happened but, as in many situations in my life, I actually sensed it happening, without seeing it. So when the announcement finally came, I was already on my way to the spot where it happened.
I yawned and lay back on the bed for a moment. But where a pillow should have been was something hard. Suddenly I began nailing it all to the wall inside my head. I bolted up, pulled the sheet back and saw the naked body, fragrant with cream colored, silken silence. Slowly it came back to me. The shapely blond I'd picked up at the bar last night had somehow turned into a Margaret Hamilton from Oz, sans the green face. She mumbled something, then pulled the sheet back over her.
I noticed her un-manicured fingernails were splotched with fuchsia as she pulled the sheet tighter around her and she mumbled again. This time I grabbed the sheet and ripped it off. She screamed.
ParklandHospital
She almost had the polka-dot thing fastened when the phone rang. Looked at the clock. Its fluorescent hands pointed to 6:151AM
Yep, that's me, Harry McCormick, great lover and ace crime reporter for the Dallas Morning News
Dallas
Mesquite
I drive an olive green 1960 Studebaker Lark 4-door. With a 289 somebody stuffed in it, the 4-barrel and twin pipes, it will GO when I want it to. Sure, I know, it isn't a Cadillac but it is so non-descript no one pays any attention to it. It blends. And it has everything I need to handle just about any emergency that might come up.
The Big Sleep
I flipped the key, waved bye-bye to Blondie and headed to the rendezvous with Rocco. As I drove down Central Expressway, I opened the window to let some of the smoke out. It was January, only a couple of months after the Kennedy assassination and the wind cut through me like a blade but it helped to clear my head. I took a deep non-nicotine breath and coughed. Gotta do something about that, one of these days.
I turned off on the exit for Main. Supposed to meet Rocco at the InterUrban station on Jacksonth sense any good reporter has. That feeling had saved my *ss maaaany times in the past. I furtively looked around but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
I nudged the bag of old clothes with my toe. It moaned. It was Rocco.
The key was the kind used in rental lockers, like those in the InterUrban building. It seemed too neat. Rocco was dead, he gave me a key to a locker with something mysterious inside and died. Yep, too neat.
your
Word count: 2149
John
It was almost 12:30 that cloudless afternoon, typically November in Dallas. Cool but sunny. A slight breeze tickled the closely cropped grass. DealeyPlaza was sprinkled with little splats of color. A woman in a bright red coat, fidgeting with a Polaroid camera. A man po-going a black umbrella up and down. (Was it a signal?) Myriad of milling people, peering back, waiting for the motorcade. If you cared to look, you saw one man standing on a pergola, with a movie camera, a woman behind him to steady him. Some of the windows in the buildings surrounding the Plaza were jammed with people. Then, motorcycles, their engines chuffing, rounded the corner from Main Street, slowed to a snail's pace. The big Lincoln limo lumbered out, snaking its way around the corner, then glided left at the next block, slowly heading toward the triple underpass. Nothing out of the ordinary that day. Except...
I woke up. I always did, as soon as the 3 shots rang out. Or was it 4? Or was it just an echo? Whatever it was, I lived it as if I'd actually been there. I sensed the shock and terror on that grassy knoll. I could read the looks of the people huddled as far into the grass as they could go, the parents protecting their children. I'd been miles away, at the TradeCenter when it happened but, as in many situations in my life, I actually sensed it happening, without seeing it. So when the announcement finally came, I was already on my way to the spot where it happened.
I yawned and lay back on the bed for a moment. But where a pillow should have been was something hard. Suddenly I began nailing it all to the wall inside my head. I bolted up, pulled the sheet back and saw the naked body, fragrant with cream colored, silken silence. Slowly it came back to me. The shapely blond I'd picked up at the bar last night had somehow turned into a Margaret Hamilton from Oz, sans the green face. She mumbled something, then pulled the sheet back over her.
I noticed her un-manicured fingernails were splotched with fuchsia as she pulled the sheet tighter around her and she mumbled again. This time I grabbed the sheet and ripped it off. She screamed.
ParklandHospital
She almost had the polka-dot thing fastened when the phone rang. Looked at the clock. Its fluorescent hands pointed to 6:151AM
Yep, that's me, Harry McCormick, great lover and ace crime reporter for the Dallas Morning News
Dallas
Mesquite
I drive an olive green 1960 Studebaker Lark 4-door. With a 289 somebody stuffed in it, the 4-barrel and twin pipes, it will GO when I want it to. Sure, I know, it isn't a Cadillac but it is so non-descript no one pays any attention to it. It blends. And it has everything I need to handle just about any emergency that might come up.
The Big Sleep
I flipped the key, waved bye-bye to Blondie and headed to the rendezvous with Rocco. As I drove down Central Expressway, I opened the window to let some of the smoke out. It was January, only a couple of months after the Kennedy assassination and the wind cut through me like a blade but it helped to clear my head. I took a deep non-nicotine breath and coughed. Gotta do something about that, one of these days.
I turned off on the exit for Main. Supposed to meet Rocco at the InterUrban station on Jacksonth sense any good reporter has. That feeling had saved my *ss maaaany times in the past. I furtively looked around but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
I nudged the bag of old clothes with my toe. It moaned. It was Rocco.
The key was the kind used in rental lockers, like those in the InterUrban building. It seemed too neat. Rocco was dead, he gave me a key to a locker with something mysterious inside and died. Yep, too neat.
your
Word count: 2149