Tripping the Badge Man. (Reimagining a conspiracy theory).

Vaulting the thin, white, arrowhead fence, he started to run. With every step his heartbeat pounded his chest in a jungle rhythm. To those who stood watching on the knoll, his dark suit seemed to mesmerise the horizon like a menacing swarm of flies. Soon another suit followed giving chase to the dark blue figure. The first man's hat bounced around his forehead, the shining badge glinting in the sun. As he ran, he was picking at the catch of a camera with all his might. Finally it snapped open, spewing the spool into the deadly sunlight. He ripped at its contents before stuffing the small pieces of photographic paper into his pocket. His accomplice caught him near the corner, just as he shattered the small camera against the nearby wall. They both headed into the underpass taking the last traces of a nation's hopes into the dark with them.

At that moment a blonde haired teenager skated into the underpass from the opposite end, oblivious to the commotion which had erupted in the nearby street. Swivelling deftly, but dangerously, in an attempt to avoid the two officers, he upended his board and sprawled to the ground, tripping the badge man and sending him straight to the ground. The second man simply kept running and was soon bursting into the bright light of morning.

This time the badge man was not so fast. As sirens sobbed above, the badge man and the teenager slowly looked at each other. The older man reached into his pocket and suddenly, as if a switch had been flicked, his fingers clasped readily around a compact revolver which soon hung magnetically from his hand. The skateboarder, already hunched from his fall, disappeared into himself, drawing his arms around his desperate body as he clawed for the narrow gutter at the edge of the wall. In that second, a shot cracked out, reverberating around the underpass; echoing, it gradually disappeared into silence. But the teenager's blood did not smear the wall, as he crumpled amongst a backdrop of red and blue graffiti.

The badge man lurched forwards towards the light. Emerging from the darkness, his black pupils bulged from his round wrinkled skull, before his brain registered that movement was not an option. Above him stood a sentry of blue. Scanning the scene he saw movement from behind a tree. The badge man froze, but by then it was too late. Like a landslide, a team of four officers were down the verge and onto him before he could reach once again for his gun.

Instead, he reached for his identity card and mouthed "C.I.A."

But as he spoke, a voice drawled and crackled out from the belt of one of the officers:
"Tippet here. We've got this guy who works in the Book Depository. Get up here now."

As the officers lumbered once more up the verge, the badge man slipped into the underpass. There, the skateboarder, lying as if dead, cowered breathlessly until the badge man had marched with deliberate, dreadful strides past him and then, breaking into a jog, had disappeared out through the other end of the tunnel.

Getting silently to his feet, and with a bullet lodged in his left elbow pad, the teenager walked in the opposite direction into the Dallas sunlight, desperate to tell his story, but try as he might, no police officer would so much as give him the time of day...