GUNFIGHT IN DEALEY PLAZA

A Tale Of Fantasy
The big Presidential limousine began to ponderously navigate the sharp turn onto Elm Street towards Dealey Plaza, and from the back seat, John F. Kennedy gave a slight wave to the 25 or so people gathered at the corner. "You can't say Dallas thinks you're a piece of communist crap now, can you Jack", said Marilyn Monroe, also waving at the throng from her spot next to the President. "Yes I can" said JFK , testily, "I know they're really all out to get me." Texas Governor John Connally and his wife, Nellie, sitting in the jump seat in front of the much-more-famous couple, ignored both the remark and the riposte. It had been a long day and they were both tired of Jack and Marilyn, and wished they'd been able to ride in the parade with Vice President Johnson instead.

Standing near the curb, right-wing crackpot Joseph Milteer took his Remington .303 rifle out of his golf bag and aimed at the President. He was fed up with the liberal Kennedys, and finally, here was his chance to do something about it. As the car completed the turn onto Elm, Milteer fired. The shot whizzed past Kennedy's head and lodged in a sapling just to the left of the triple overpass, 500 yards away. JFK turned to his right and saw Milteer beginning to take aim for a second try. The President quickly reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out his trusty .357 Magnum, loaded and ready. He squeezed off three quick shots before Milteer could steady his aim. All three rounds struck the aging rightest square in the chest, and he fell limply to the sidewalk. Marilyn cooed "great shooting, Jack, what a President you are!" John and Nellie Connally, at first alarmed by the shots, instead slid quietly to the floor of the limousine, disappointed that Milteer had missed. But they knew there was more to come.

Just behind a tree to the right of the Presidential car as it sped down Elm at 5 miles an hour, Sam Giancana reached into the pant waist of his sharkskin suit and pulled out his revolver. Drawing a bead on the President, he pulled the trigger of the .38 snub nose, but nothing happened. It had misfired. Kennedy, who was still holding his smoldering Magnum, caught a glimpse of Giancana and refocused his aim on the Mafia chieftain and squeezed off a single round. Giancana disappeared in a red haze. Marilyn looked at Jack and said "I used to know him, he was such a nice man. I wonder what made him want to be so mean?" Jack scowled at her and replied, "I should have had Bobby deport him to Cuber with all the rest of those ungrateful rats. Sinatra didn't know the half of it." JFK ordered the limo to a halt and scanned the plaza, looking for more.

A little farther up Elm, businessman Abraham Zapruder was standing on a grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza filming the parade as it approached his position. Seeing Kennedy kill two people in a matter of seconds, he screamed "He's going to kill them all", over and over while still keeping his super-8 camera trained on the carnage. Lying on the ground behind him, E. Howard Hunt of the CIA, had tracked the President's car through the iron sight of his Browning semi-automatic rifle, poking from between Zapruder's shoes. As Kennedy casually blew smoke from the barrel of his .357, Hunt fired. The shot lifted a wisp of blonde hair from Marilyn's coiffure, continued past the car and into a crowd watching the motorcade, killing amateur photographers Mary Moorman and Jean Hill instantly, Hill's just-taken Polaroid photo of the President brandishing his pistol was still grasped in her lifeless hand. It wasn't even dry yet. Hunt's shot had missed it's target because Kennedy had been reaching under his seat for the loaded AK-47 Premier Kruschev had given him as a birthday gift. The President trained and rapid-fired his new weapon in the direction of the prone Hunt, but hit Zapruder instead, sending the hapless filmmaker to the ground. Once he was out of the way, JFK had a clear shot at the panicking Hunt and dispatched him with a sustained burst of fire. "Come On, you bahstards, are there any more of you?", shouted the Commander-In-Chief as he reloaded.

There were. Behind a stockade fence at the back of the grassy knoll, three Cubans with beards and cigars were all aiming US Army surplus M-16's at Kennedy, who was now standing on the top of the back seat triumphantly pointing his weapon skyward, firing off celebratory shots. The President was now an easy target for Castro's men. With military precision, they all fired simultaneously. One bullet grazed the elbow of JFK's suit coat, opening up a quarter-inch tear in the fabric, but the others went wide. Looking in the direction of the fusillade, he yelled at the top of his lungs "Hey! do you know how much this suit cost, you Commies?" Kennedy looked down at Marilyn, re-arranging her hair in a compact mirror, and cried "give me a hand grenade sweethaht, there's one in the map pocket in front of my seat!" When she found it, she looked up and giggled "Is this it? This thing that looks like a little pineapple?", and handed it to him. Kennedy - the AK-47 in one hand and the grenade in the other - pulled the pin out with his teeth and threw it over the fence in among the re-aiming Cubans. The explosion not only disintegrated the trio, but killed five other armed men in the parking lot behind the fence, apparently awaiting their turn at the President. A toothy grin slowly spread across Kennedy's face as he watched the bodies fly up in the air.

Meanwhile, in a window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Suppository, just off Dealey Plaza, order clerk Lee Oswald was all alone, munching on a baloney sandwich and watching with horror the carnage unfolding before his eyes. "This has got to stop", he thought to himself. Propped up against the wall next to the window, wrapped up in a blanket, was an old rifle that he had brought to work with him that day and was planning to swap with a co-worker for some new curtain rods. Oswald wondered if maybe he could do something to bring an end to this violent situation. He put aside his sandwich and carefully unwrapped the blanket from around the rifle and checked to see if it was still loaded...

-Anonymous