Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25073641-20160610180030

First of all, I want to take Jay ten for providing his well-appreciated feedback. Without him... well, this historical creepypasta would be obnoxiously bad. Also my kudos goes to Chris (Pokemongreen3867 ) and Derek (KillaHawke1 ) for at least trying to help me out with my story: I really hope they can do it.

Anyway, this story is currently unfinished and is in dire need of editing. About 70% completed in rough estimations. I was actually thinking of canceling this project due to some difficulties with writing and research schedules, with its historical complexity topping it all, but since I was more than halfway through it, I guess it won't hurt to push this forward. As of now, I'm gathering some information regarding J.D. Tippit's murder by Lee Harvey Oswald, as it will play a pivotal part in the story. Research is difficult as always, as I certainly need to trudge through the hundred-page Warren Commission Report, but I know I can make it without driving myself nuts.

Wish me luck guys. And help me out.

Under the Dot
Under the dot… under the dot… under the dot.

Lee Harvey Oswald peeked on the scope of his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, his heart beating rapidly and his body dripping with sweat. The storage room, which was littered with tall pillars of brown cardboard boxes, felt like the infinite, ever-growing labyrinth one of his coworkers in the Depository once mentioned to him, and suddenly he was ridden with a faint sense of claustrophobia. He tried not give himself into it, and instead focused on his task. The skies outside were clear and blue; the clouds had moved away from Dealey Plaza and the sun was on full blast. The temperature in the tight storage slowly climbed up, which made him feel slightly queasy. But despite the mercuries passing over ninety, he remained standing by the window, tall and firm, with his right hand on the trigger and his left on the forestock of his bolt-action rifle.

This was the time he’d been waiting for. Eight months of strenuous planning and toilsome preparations passed by in an agonizing crawl, but he didn’t let any of it diminish his will, not even his previous failure. Now, the watershed moment was about to come, and a change for the better was knocking on the world’s doorstep; only he needed to open the door for it and embrace it, like how Marina hugged their child when she was born. However evil and cold-hearted it might seem, whoever it might affect or whatever chaos it might set in motion, the deed must be done…

Or the butterfly effect might occur again. The dreaded butterfly effect which ruined a million lives of unknowing people.

"No, it can’t happen again,” Lee murmured under his breath, tapping the side of the trigger guard with every passing second. The clinking sound of finger against the gunmetal matched the tone and rhythm of the song Marina sung to their daughter June when she was sleeping, and the thought of it did calm his turbulent nerves. The thought of doing it for the betterment of the world and especially his family’s life urged him into doing such a remarkably heinous act of murder; even hurting his wife would do her some good in the future. This told him nothing would turn out for the worse.

But as strange as it looked to him (or perhaps it was actually strange to begin with) everything felt like déjà vu, with the same gun and in the same position, only he was in a room full of boxes and not in a goddamn treetop. The events of April 10, 1963 played inside his head, like a flashback scene in a black-and-white thriller film. His failure to eliminate The Devil’s Advocate, General Edwin Anderson Walker, on the tenth had a bad effect on the world, one he didn’t truly expect. When he found out about the USS Thresher disaster, a chill of ran down his body, and that time the cloudy waters went clear: the tragedy was all his fault. Sinking and sinking deeper into the dark ocean they were, and it was all his doing.

The entire crew of USS Thresher was killed, and the authorities deemed their bodies irrecoverable. No known equipment could go under the sea and reach where the broken submarine had resided. The families of the dead, drowned men wished the bodies of their loved ones to be recovered, but the retrieval operations couldn’t even be conceived, much more initiated. There was nothing they could do but weep and grieve as the corpses of their beloved mariners perished under the sea.

In the beginning he thought his conclusion was far-fetched, but it didn’t take a genius to give it justification. The two events were completely unrelated to one another. There weren’t any red strings connecting the two, at least not that he could see. But after all the senseless thinking and pointless rationalization, all the lines eventually ended up to a single theory: Butterfly effect.

He determined it was the butterfly effect doing its thing: Destroying lives and killing people. It sounded absurd yet absolutely sinister. A small change, a slight aberration, and it took lives… exactly like what happened in USS Thresher.

He detested himself for his untimely clumsiness and vowed not to commit the same mistake again. If only the bullet didn’t miss a few inches from his head, if only he didn’t wound his hand on the climb, all those innocent people might be alive and well.

Unlike now. Missing. Dead, trapped inside a rusted chunk of hollowed metal, covered in moss, feasted upon by fishes at the bottom of the sea.

He failed to save them. Their deaths… they were all his fault. His doing.

It was the year 1963 and many more years were to come if he successfully does his job, and yet everything felt so final and so ultimate.

Lee did his best to silence the voices. Distractions weren’t needed now, and what he desperately wanted were silence and a peace of mind. What should come soon would inevitably change the world—for better or for worse—and its final fate were in his hands; whether it will live through or die. Anything that would stray him from his path should be ignored and wasted away. The voices didn’t seem to understand; they went on with their hard, cold denunciations, seemingly without care or consideration.

“Why haven’t you saved us, Lee Harvey Oswald?” the drowned voices of the 129 dead men spoke all at once inside his head. The voices tormented him, and it was driving him up the wall. “Why didn’t you kill that Walker? You were so close, Lee. So close.”

Please, shut up. So many lives are in danger now; the least you can do for me is close your fucking mouths.

His pleadings weren’t needed after all, as they completely understood what he said. The 129 voices laugh weakly at him, upset and scornful, before they faded away and went back to the darkness where they belong. For this he couldn’t help but thank the nonexistent God. These voices had been disturbing him since the day he failed to kill Walker, and after months of inflicting emotional and mental anguish upon him, he was glad they’d finally gone off—although he didn’t know how long this peace would last.

Distractions should not call him off from his goals. Under any circumstances, he should not miss the mark; he promised to these voices not to fail again. He’d channeled all his attention and energy to this final deed. Lee felt confident he would never end up a failure like before. Never again. The Harbinger, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, would die under the barrel of his rifle, and that he was sure of. The President would be under' the dot.

Lee knew what would come if he failed. He could barely register the idea without cowering in fear. It was terrifying… horrid and dreadful. And it looked unbelievably real. He was sure he wasn’t a madman himself, but when he dreamt about the world’s damnation, he could have become a madman himself.

A sleeping madman on the verge of death. Only saved by June’s night cries.

From the top floor of Book Depository, through the scope of his rifle, he could see almost everything in eye-clear quality, from the Dallas Records Building, which just got a new coat of white paint, to the triple underpass, where the President’s parade was routed to. At the right side of the right underpass was the grass-laden hill, which where he found a man in suit standing on a pedestal, clutching a box-like item that looked like a camera. There were also two children on the grass, their parents just sitting beside them. A few feet away from the family, seated on the pavement, were two men in dark-colored jackets: the guy on the left was empty-handed and on the right held a black umbrella in his hand. The camera didn’t mean anything to him, the children too, nor was the umbrella, so he shrugged them off and shifted his rifle to the right, bumping his knee against a solid cardboard box in the process.

“Shit,” Lee muttered, a frown upon his face, clutching his pained knee. “Fucking boxes need to be gone.”

As he rubbed his knee, the pain slowly subsided, and when it was gone he kicked the box away. “There,” Lee said, then moved closer to the wall. Careful not to let anyone down the street see him, he laid his rifle upon the pile of boxes, and with his shoulder against the concrete, he peeked out the window.

Below were the President’s supporters—and perhaps a handful of well-disguised KBG or CIA agents hiding among the spectators, or perhaps a few anti-Kennedy extremists on the run, of which where he rightfully belonged—neatly lined up on the sidewalk, patiently waiting under the hot, blue skies. Such devout Kennedy supporters, he thought as he pulled his head back into the window, I hope they understand me if I killed him… which he knew deep inside him they won’t.

Kennedy wasn’t anywhere to be found. Lee reckoned the parade—the long line of black cars and motorcycles occupied by Secret Service guards and the President’s limousine—would be entering Houston Street by now, which the faint sounds of cheering and blaring horns from the distance confirmed. The people below seemed to be completely eager to meet the President—for reasons unknown to him. The dedication and devotion they had displayed not only shocked him to his bones but revolted him. From their eyes Kennedy was a hero or a savior, perhaps maybe a god, but to him, he was nothing but a formidable monster, a reptilian creature hiding behind a convincing human mask.

For this reason, Kennedy must be annihilated.

Lee heaved a deep, restless sigh and wondered how long this wait would be. A few minutes more, he supposed, a hand ready on his rifle. His heart—now he was ever so close to the watershed moment—was storming inside his chest, like a monster trying to break out of the metal cage it was thrown into. But there was no monster inside him. Kennedy, The Harbinger, had, and it’s one of the fiercest and cruelest he’d ever seen in existence. The President and the abomination inside him would soon meet their demise. That was the watershed moment he’d been waiting for—Kennedy’s assassination by an unknown perpetrator.

The newspapers—maybe tomorrow morning or two—would soon be full of boldfaced headlines regarding his unfortunate death. The world would mourn his death, that he was certain of, but it was all for the best. It was all to avert the world from the path of destruction.

Checking the arsenal of his weapon, Lee lifted up the rifle, grabbed its bolt handle—a thin curved bar with a ball of metal welded on its end—and pulled it back; he looked into the cartridge and found the brass bullets still inside, ready to be fired down. Exactly just like he saw it an hour ago. He slid the bolt handle close, latching it back to its place, and brought it rifle down to the box. He pulled out his Smith-Wesson .38 revolver from his back, unlocked the bullet cylinder and looked inside: there were bullets in the six slots, but one of them was empty. He didn’t mind anyway; he just brought it with him if the cops make a ruckus, which, with a sense of self-assurance, would not.

Khorosho, Lee muttered. The cheering of the crowd and the honking of the cars from the distance slowly grew louder and louder, and he didn’t even need to think about it. It was coming, getting closer and closer to him, and he pledged to himself and the drowned men it would all end with a bang.

Lee took his rifle and readied to shoot.

Pozhaluysta, Lee whispered as he leaned over his Carcano, putting his eye on the scope and a finger on the trigger. He felt overjoyed—the thought of saving the world, with or without recognition, brought him up to the clouds… and yet the slight dread lingered somewhere inside his body, because the tingling sensation in his knee was suddenly coming back. It was an unexpected return, one he didn’t want and really didn’t expect.

What the hell’s happening? Lee wondered as he struggled to suppress the pain in his knee, whimpering quietly like a dog suffering from its injuries after being beaten down. It didn’t hurt much now, not like it did when he was fresh from hitting the box, but it made him feel clouded and uncomfortable; his peace of mind and balance threatened to wane off.

Why now?

Was it all bound to happen again? Would the events of the tenth of April repeat itself? And most of all, with the sudden anguish he’s bearing, would he successfully kill The Harbinger?

I will… Or the butterfly effect…

The black four-seater Lincoln Continental limousine arrived at Dealey Plaza thirty minutes after noon had set in, President Kennedy seated on the left side of the backseat along with his lover Jacqueline Kennedy, Texas Governor John Bowden Connally and his wife Idanell Brill Connally. The people on the side of the road produced their friendly smiles and peacefully cheered and observed as the presidential parade took a left turn from Houston Street onto Elm. Kennedy, wearing a small smile and seemingly in a fit of amusement, humbly waved back to his people. He apparently enjoyed the joyous scenery around him, which was marked by his looks of enthusiasm and gratification.

I was in Russia for years, Lee thought as he fiddled with the trigger, his hands feeling the need… but I know what you’ve done to America, Mr. President, and what you’re planning to do.

Lee’s knee still vaguely hurt, but he just brushed it off and thought it would all soon be gone. Hopefully before the assassination would initiate. His mind was racing and his heart was pounding faster than it ever did in his entire 24 years, but despite the strong pressure of the situation, he kept his calm and mustered up determination. This was the watershed moment he’d been waiting for. He couldn’t let the chance to save the world slip through his fingers.

The Harbinger must die.

I will kill you, Kennedy. Lee breathed in, stifled his broken knee, held his breath, narrowed his eyes, readied his finger…

And placed the President’s head under the dot.

The President must die…

The Lady in Red
''“Mr. President, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you.”''

The limousine was turning left on Elm Street, pass the white-painted Dallas County Records Building, when Jack Kennedy glimpsed Nellie, the Texas Governor’s beautiful wife, turn her head to him and speak. He had been waving at the people on the sidewalk—most of whom were cheering for him and taking pictures—when out of the blue she remarked how Dallas adored him as the President. The woman, who sported a red fabric jacket and a matching red fabric knee-length skirt, had been silent throughout the parade, so suddenly hearing her sharp, piercing voice woke him up from his stupor.

Jack turned away from the crowd, lifted his head towards Nellie, her eyes gazing intently at him, and replied with a pleasant smirk still on his face: “No, you certainly can’t.”

Nellie smiled back to him and spun her head back to the front, suddenly looking away from John in the car, the Governor of Texas John Connally. Jack, suddenly feeling incredulous, rested his arm on the side of the limousine and continued waving back to his supporters. Everything felt like a movie, and yet he knew this was real life. He’d been the President of the United States for about two years—and many more years to come—and yet everything was a fairytale to him, even his presidency…

This felt like a scene in a fairytale, only this had a touch of realism and modern, and as far-fetched as it might sound, he could wave and smile at this eager people all day and all night. It was easy to do, and with his pink lady Jackie beside him everything somehow looked fairytale-like. He liked their smiles and excited giggles, their unrelenting support, their trust… everything. If this was all a dream—this parade, this fervent crowd, this limousine, these people with him, his presidency—then he didn’t want to wake up.

The Newman children watched confused and their parents, Bill and Gayle, eyed Kennedy intently as the President’s limousine went closer. Abraham Zapruder, a man in the hat and suit, stood on the rectangular pedestal that was a part of the concrete pergola that stood behind him, his assistant Marilyn Sitzman assisting him by holding his coat; his Bell-Howell camera was on and was capturing every living second of what would soon be history, although the metallic back of the Stemmon Freeway sign blocked most of the view. The man didn’t mind though—even his pounding vertigo didn’t faze him—and kept on filming. And then there was the lady with another camera, on the flat grassy left side of Elm Street; she wore a straw hat twice as wide as her head and a quite untimely scarf wrapped around the lower part of her face and neck, hiding her nose and mouth. Her face was hidden behind all her vanity, but it never raised any concerns. Nothing didn’t seem wrong; everything was just as usual, like it was expected to be.

Yet among the crowd was a person who, deep inside him, scorned the President, who he saw as the traitor to the nation. And with him he carried something that seemed… radical. It signified his loathing towards him. The man standing on the sidewalk, separated from the rest of the spectators, accompanied by a black friend who shared the same ideology as him, pulled out a long, cylindrical object…

As the limousine drove closer and closer, he knew what he had to do. The two unexpected explosions bothered him, but he didn’t let them ruin his plans.

The limousine was suddenly in front of him… Then the man in the dark blue jacket lifted his black umbrella up to his head and opened it up, putting himself under the shadows of what America had become… gazing at the President with deep hatred, he then slowly turned it clockwise. Louie Steven Witt felt the anger in his heart burn brighter and wilder…

But everything went cold when the third bang came. A chill ran down his spine when he saw a pink hat fall out of the limousine.

Governor Connally spun to his right, holding his white cowboy hat up to his chest, and made an inaudible remark amidst the rumbling sound of engines and cheering around him. Nellie and Jackie turned around to the direction of the noise and made disturbed expressions. The crowd reacted to the sound, their faces shifting from cheery to agitated in a fraction of a second.

What is that? Jack, completely oblivious, didn’t have any idea what the noise was—it sounded like an array of firecrackers all set off at once—and he knew it came from his right, but nothing pointed out to a viable conclusion.

No, those weren’t firecrackers or anything. It was something else. Something loud. Something powerful. Jack struggled to come up with a conclusion, one he could easily and safely buy, but seeing the troubled faces of his people set him off. Then four seconds later, after the limousine drove past the rectangular signboard that said Stemmon Freeway, there was the second shot.

The clouds cleared off. His worst fears were now confirmed. It wasn’t a firecracker or any fireworks. He’d been used to hearing it when he was still battling the Axis about twenty years ago, but now the gunshot sounded so strange and so foreign to him.

The bullet missed—at least that’s what he hoped for—its target and thought it landed on an inanimate object instead. Jack quickly ducked down, his arms raised up to his throat, and slowly leaned his body onto Jackie, who looked as terrified as everyone else. She looked sensational in her pink suit and a matching pink pillbox hat, like a pretty princess from a fairytale, but with those worried eyes and feverishly shaking gloved hands, she appeared more like a damsel in distress. Nowhere as beautiful as she could be. Jackie took hold of Jack’s arm, slid a hand into his back, and lowered herself, mumbling something he still couldn’t understand.

What is happening?

Everyone was panicking, frantically running around for cover or two like rats scurrying out of a sinking ship, fear evident in their eyes. Terror had overwhelmed the entire Dealey Plaza and the crowd that had occupied its streets. The Governor uttered something, Nellie and Jackie too, but his ears couldn’t pick up any sound but the gunshot’s harrowing bang that echoed infinitely inside his head. Somewhere out there, among the sea of spectators and the towering buildings, nested somewhere out of reach, the shooter hid, and with him he had his gun that he would use to take down his target. Danger could be anywhere around him, perhaps a mile away or just a few feet from him, aiming its gun at someone, preparing for the final blow.

Five seconds later, the third shot rang. That was it. Everything seemed to slow down that moment.

“John,” a feminine voice beside him spoke; he felt her hands jerk. Her voice sounded soft and comforting, but something in her tone didn’t seem right. “Help… help me.”

Jack turned this left. He knew someone was out there to kill someone, probably him or someone else he knew or else didn’t know of, but he was already screaming when he realized they had succeeded.

But what devastated him the most was the one they took down.

Jack’s eyes filled with horror, watching ever so helplessly, as blood poured out of Jackie’s mouth.

Several seconds ago Jack was happily waving at the crowd, and the parade was going on smoothly and undisturbed; everything was in favor of him, and he was good with that. But after three gunshots, the tides had suddenly turned against him. Her hat was missing. Jackie, who was wearing pink, was now wearing red. Blood red. The deepest shade of red he’d ever seen Jackie wear. And Jackie didn’t look good in those clothes. Jackie never did. John had never seen her buy any clothes that seemed too red for her, but now she wore one, one that she didn’t want and didn’t like.

“Jackie… Oh my God, Jackie! … To the hospital!”

More blood spurted out Jackie’s mouth, staining his suit with dark patches of red. His arms were covered in blood and so was his face, his suit, once dark gray, had been colored to a sickly shade of crimson. He didn’t mind, even though his suit cost him a hundred dollars. What mattered was Jackie, the lady in red.

Jackie leaned to her right and would have fallen to the carpeted floor hadn’t Jack caught him. Jack laid his wife’s head upon his lap and shook her face with his hand, telling her she was going to be okay and that she would not die and that he loved her more than himself and more than God. But his voice didn’t resonate in her ears; she didn’t hear a single word he said. Her red face sweated profusely and trickles of blood went down her chin. The life in her eyes was fading away, and he couldn’t stand looking at it defenseless and vulnerable. He never wanted to see those eyes close in front of him, and yet it was happening. His nightmares, those he held back firmly at the back of his head for so long, we’re now uprising, making their violent return…

With a bang.

“I love you, Jacqueline. I love you. You know that, right. You’ll be okay, I promise…”

Then he felt the limousine accelerate… yet everything was still slow. His mind—which was as sluggish as the rest of the world—couldn’t register what kind of horror he was witnessing. What he was seeing was his lovely wife being assassinated, and his world falling apart, and yet he still couldn’t make sense of any of it. Still unable to believe a single thing laid in front of him. This might be a dream, a dream that became a nightmare so fast and so abruptly, and now he wanted to wake up. To wake up from this horrible nightmare. He can take every madness that world throws at him; he can stand to lose his standing as the president and be robbed of all his wealth, but watching the lady in red, the woman he loved, die in his hands… he couldn’t imagine how life would become like that.

“John,” Jackie called, her breathing roughed and raspy. It was slowing down. “Don’t speak, Jackie,” Jack replied, his hand groping her warm, bloodstained cheek. “We’ll take you to the hospital.”

“I think I can’t…” she coughed out more blood and breathed in heavily, “…can’t do it anymore. It’s too painful.”

A man in a black suit—a Secret Service agent, Jack perceived—ran to the limousine and made a leap to the trunk. The limousine speeding up, he crawled his way to the back seat, reaching out his hand to him and Jackie as he commanded the driver to go the nearest hospital. He didn’t see him there, nor he listened to his terrified outcries. He only paid attention to his beautiful Jackie. Her eyes were gently closing, like she was going to sleep… only it wasn't sleep where she was going. Somewhere lonelier, somewhere more distant, somewhere eternal.

“No. Jackie, no.” he slapped her bloodied cheek again and again in a desperate fight to keep her conscious, but he knew he was failing before the battle even began; her eyelids slowly made their descent, and there was nothing he could do but stare frantic as life seeped out of her brown eyes. “Wake up. Shit, don’t close your eyes. For God’s sake, Jacqueline, don’t close your eyes! Don’t, please.”

But it was too late. Jackie rest peacefully on his lap, her breathing stopping, her pulse slowing down, her fire-like warmth dying away… and her eyes closed.

Tears formed in his eyes; he let them flow down his cheeks.

The limousine made its way to the underpass, pass the panicking onlookers who already had run away to hide. Before his world stopped, he heard a feminine voice speak. At first he thought his mind was playing tricks on him, but it came from below his face. Those words she said, they signified the end… the end of everything.

“John,

“I’m sorry.”

Then his whole world went dark. All he heard was the rumbling of wheels and the shouts of the agent as he prepared to see everything he ever had fall down to the abyss of despair. There was light at the end of the tunnel, but the hope never settled in…

Because he now knew there never was, and there never would be.

The Patrolman
“Officer Tippit, are you there? Over.” Patrolman J. D. Tippit was driving down the streets of South Oak Cliff, feeling the monotony settle inside him after an hour of tedious cruising around the rather peaceful residence, when the voice of a woman boomed on the speakers. Instantly he was awoken from his bored state, and quickly he fetched the radio. He hoped Pauline had something interesting to say, other than ordering him to get back to the headquarters, which he’d already heard for like the millionth time in his whole twelve years as a Dallas patrolman.

He placed the radio next to his mouth and said, “Tippit here. Over.”

The woman sounded overly serious when she said those words—almost grievingly. Tippit never heard her speak in such a low, depressing manner. She’d been always like this for years to begin with, cold and serious, but something in the tone of her voice sounded odd and off… He didn’t need a moment or two to realize something had gone wrong.

“Officer Tippit, please leave your patrol field and move immediately to Central Oak Cliff area. Over.”

He let the words settle inside him. The last time he was advised to move to somewhere out of his patrol area was like five months ago, when a housewife reported a burglar roaming the streets of After several seconds of silence and astonishment, he was finally able to grasp the urgency of the situation. “Why? What happened? Over.”

The woman never replied to his inquiry and instead gave out specific directions that he could never bear to ignore. “Head over to Central Oak Cliff and search for a white man—has slender build, seems to be in his late twenties or early thirties, about five feet tall and weighs around 75 kilograms. Get there quick. Over.”

Turning his patrol car to the left street lined with unoccupied houses that had already rotten in age, he asked what was happening and why he was receiving this strange, sudden orders. The meaningless words echoed inside his head for a moment—there was absolutely no way it could happen; she was a woman of beauty and virtue. No such person in his sound mind could ever do a horrible thing like that. Yet it did happen. The realization, “mad men in fine clothes walk among us every day”, made him pale in dread…

His blood froze when the words finally clicked.

''“'First' lady shot down. Get to the central A-S-A-P. Over.”''

As he passed by the old, decrepit house at the end of the street, seeing an old woman stand quietly by the dusty window, he made a right turn and radioed back with an equally grave voice.

''“Coming. Over.”''

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