6th Floor Shooter || #Wattys2017

II

22 November 1963// 14:00 // Elm Street // Dallas, Texas//

"He is dead of a bullet wound to the brain."

Within the hour, anguished voices emanated through every hissing radio and crackling television set. 'The President has been assassinated'... 'He has died of a bullet in the brain'... 'JFK slain in Dallas'... 'President killed by gun shot to the skull'... Every reporter, every commentator repeating the same solemn fact, like a perpetual echo of what he had done. On the street, a bitter wind wailed through the street. With it, a persistent and chilling sputter of rain from an otherwise cloudless sky. Incessant sunlight still hammered down on the courtyard, but to everyone in attendance, its blinding rays were lost in the muted lamentation. Some sobbed unabashedly. Others watched broadcasts through the display windows in local businesses. In a city that was known for being rough-cut and fast-paced, every street was cloaked in subdued sorrow.

Ed skulked away from the scene, leaving the murmurs of bereavement behind him... but their voices still haunted him. His fingers plunged into raw wool pocket of his trousers. Although the damning ammunition had been deposited carelessly with a willing lackey, the keys of his early 50's Studebaker sedan remained. The chilling brass of the key felt eerily similar to that of the extra bullet, but he swallowed the thought and willed it to go away. He peered at his reflection windshield.

Dishevelled chestnut hair splayed across an age-creased forehead. He was merely thirty-three years old, but his looks far surpassed any notion of youth. His gaunt lips pursed into a lopsided smirk, covering stained and yellowed teeth. A single button on the collar of his tartan shirt had slipped through its hole, parting the red and yellow cotton fabric just enough to reveal the edge of his sweat stained undershirt. Heavily creased wool trousers, unbelted, perched on his hips. He was as nondescript and indistinct as any man in the city.

The door to the vehicle opened smoothly on its hinges and Ed slid into the driver's seat. If he had thought the stench of gunpowder was disrupting before, it smouldered within his eyes, nose and mouth simultaneously now. Just as he had wrapped his fingers around the trigger of the Carcano rifle, his hands found their way to the window crank and he watched as the window came down correspondingly. His right hand slid the key into the ignition, and with his left foot firmly on the clutch, he turned it. He shuddered as the engine sputtered and groaned before growling to life. The plaid sleeve covering his left arm skimmed down his forearm and bunched at the elbow as he reached into the visor for his cigarettes. Striking a match, he perched the stick between narrow lips and joggled the gear shift into first. By releasing the clutch, he reeled the wheel sharply to the right and sputtered out of the parking lot.

The steering column squealed in complaint as he exited the searing pavement and turned right, onto Houston Street.

On any other day, the rough grumbling of his engine would have aggravated everyone around him, himself included, but in that moment, it was a welcome distraction from the wailing cries in the street. He turned the vehicle around onto Elm Street, just as the Presidential Motorcade had done only an hour earlier. Here he was now, maneuvering his silver Studebaker down the same street that would undoubtedly become the most infamous in the city. Braking lightly, his head craned around to see the foreboding brick building from which his actions changed history. There. The inconspicuous corner window on the sixth floor. A flicker of movement caught his eye from within, provoking another one of his trademark gaudy grins. Those bastards ain't gonna find a thing up there.

He slowed as a radio broadcast fizzled through the car into his consciousness President Kennedy assassinated, Governor Connally gravely wounded... First Lady narrowly escapes disaster...The commentary was equally as jarring each time he heard it.

Keeping at least one hand on the wheel, Ed rolled the sleeves on his work shirt up to his elbows. He spat the remnants of the cigarette onto the pavement and reached for another to take its place. But it was too late...

He was thinking of her... her dark and ornately coiffed hair contrasting sharply with her blush pink pillbox hat. Her infectious and heartwarming smile that had stolen the hearts of an entire country. The elegant solid pink suit that had made her the perfect target from his vantage point through the window...

His sweaty palm slammed against the clammy leather of the steering wheel. Damn it! He intended to cause suffering, but not like this. No, there was no suffering in death, especially as quick as it had been. The real suffering would have laid in sitting beside one's wife, the love of their life, and watching her be heartlessly gunned down by an anonymous assassin.

Dammit, dammit, dammit... such a fuck up! God dammit! Ed sneered to himself, his grip on the leather wheel tightening with every syllable. Before he knew it, white-knuckled skeleton hands surrounded it with a vice grip. He could feel the rage in his body. Like a fiery flood, it shot through his veins with every beat of his heart.

Growling with disgust, he remembered the cigarette in the visor. Now too angry to desire the silvery smoke, he thumped the visor back up, geared up, and sped down Elm Street. With a twist of ironic fate perhaps, as he passed the very mark on the crumbling pavement where his fatal shot struck the President, a single slip of paper slipped from the visor clip and drifted out of the open window. Flying down the street and under the Triple Overpass much like the Presidential Limousine had, he didn't even notice what he had left behind... and how it alone could be more damning than any of the evidence he had paid Oswald to remove.

Had he been thinking clearer, he would have noticed the State of Texas-issued driver's licence crumpled on the exact spot where his own shot impacted the most important man in the country. More specifically, he would have cared about the legal name recorded on the document: Edward Harrell...