The Kolchak Tapes: The Kent State Happening (Short Story Edition)

So The Story Goes...

 The story begins in classic fashion. The famous bumbling report, Carl Kolchak, comes stepping into his office with a desperate mug of coffee on an early morning. He whistles to himself, partly from absent-minded casualness and partly trying to keep himself awake. Around his whistled melody, a pleasant orchestra and band play around him that nobody seems to hear (taken from "Kolchak: The Night Stalker"). He sits down at his desk after walking towards his quote-unquote "office" and throwing his hat lazily at the hook on the wall. Paying no mind to it completely bounce off and fall to the floor, Carl sits down and looks at the page on his desk. Raising suspicions and an eyebrow to match, Carl instantly snaps into "Work Mode", sliding a blank sheet of paper into his typewriter and writing away determinedly. Kolchak continues his work but begins to notice that the room is slowly darkening around him as the music becomes ominous and foreboding. Perhaps he lost track of time, but he was for certain that it was just morning when he walked in, and nobody else seemed to be around. Looking around though trying not to pay too much mind to it all, the music suddenly builds up to a jarring climax as the fan behind him suddenly clicks off. The room is as black as night as the door behind him swings open, yet it was nothing but a dark hallway with nothing there. Kolchak spins around, finally breaking away from his typewriter as the image freezes, slowly zooming in on his eyes and facial expression.

As the episode starts, we get a large moving shot of around town, seeing various dilapidated houses and bustling streets with a big band playing in the background to compliment the scene (taken from "Horror In The Heights".) The next shot is of Kolchak walking into the office, but not before ducking behind the door to avoid certain protesters outside the I.N.S. Headquarters. Carl shook his head, straightening his hat which had been slapped askew from his head. The music dies down as Carl steps into the main foyer. Before he can even get to his office, his boss, who took the title quite literally, stepped out from behind the doorway of his own private office, something he very well loved and needed. Tony Vincenzo, a man at large in both stature and voice, barked in the all-too-familiar tone to his most troublesome worker.

"CARL!" That was about all that took for Kolchak to at least make an attempt to snap to action. At least, that was what was probably hoped. Instead, Carl simply closed his eyes with a depressive sigh, shaking his head. Thinking that Kolchak had gone deaf, which probably was likely from all that yelling, Vincenzo bellowed again. "CARL! Get in here! I've got something for you!" Carl snorted to himself, raising a defiant if not tired eyebrow in Tony's general direction. Stepping into Vincenzo's office, Kolchak sat down as professionally as he could muster.

"I'm all ears, Tony. What have we got now?" To which he thought, probably a pink slip and a box on his desk. Vincenzo grumpily plopped down beside Kolchak, nearly breaking the flimsy wooden chair into 20th-century kindling.

"Carl, you're not gonna believe this. Have you gotten the newest report from our scribes over in Vietnam?"

"Which part, Tony? I know that people are still very much upset about the Tet Offensive. Then, to make matters worse, there was the massive ambush in the My Lai villages. Hundreds and hundreds of people, blown away, burned to the ground, all of it! No wonder there are angry people in the streets protesting and carrying on."

"It's getting ridiculous! At the same time, this is probably the best time of our lives right now. We've got a job, a constant one! Finally, someone's taking care of business over there. Young people don't know what's really going on over there. They should know that this whole Communism... virus, or whatever it is, is going around fast. It's even infiltrated America!" Carl nearly choked on his own spit, twisting his head around and glaring at his bitter employer.

"Excuse me, Tony?! Women and children were blasted to bits even though they had no jurisdiction in the war in the first place! They were innocent people, Tony! How could you say such a thing?!"