Modern Mythology: A Delta Green/Unknown Armies Freak-out

My name is James Tague. Under the LBJ expressway on an early morning in November, I got a bullet through my left foot.

I was watching the motorcade outside my brother's pawn shop, hoping to pick up some hot little number from out of town. Young girls from all over the county came dressed up as their idol, the Queen of America.

Everyone that day was there because they were in love with the man. Even in the great Republican state of Texas, where liberals were hated more than Mexicans and Niggers and called fucking panty-waist pussies, that man was something special, something different. We were all out there, having a party, trying to get a good look at passing greatness. My brother had closed down the shop and was selling hot dogs and cold beer. I was taking the money, keeping odd handfuls for myself in my back pocket.

There was a rush of cars, and then we all got excited. There he was, right there in front of us. Him and his missus, smiling and waving. Then they were gone, up the road and to the right. Another minute and it was all over. Everything got quiet on my block, then I heard the pops that might've been fireworks and felt my foot explode.

Ain't that incredible, I thought to myself.

I hobbled on over to show my brother, blood pumping out quicker than I could imagine. I should've raised it up and stopped stepping on it, but instead I passed out right there in the street.

They took me to Parkland, what would become Children's. He was on the same floor as me, except he had close to a hundred people standing outside his door. I was alone, except when a guy in a suit came in to question me. I found out Lee Harvey was the one who pulled the trigger, up in that book depository. This didn't make much sense to me, as there was no way a bullet from the depository could hit my foot. No way at all. Besides, I'd had lunch with Lee at the local cafeteria from time to time, he was a nice enough guy.

He'd even come into my brother's shop looking for deals from time to time. The man in the suit introduced himself as Zeke. He was with the secret service and he wanted to talk to me about Lee, since I admitted I knew him and all. Turned out Zeke was a pretty nice fellow and believed everything I said. He believed that no one man could kill the president like that. Especially not someone like Lee Harvey.

Zeke was my cell name. I rushed to Dallas as soon as I'd heard the news. There'd been rumors of a major takedown coming up from shadows. We were informed of a new threat, a new unknown. Something with the stink of Magick. James helped run a pawn shop. He dealt in desperation, buying items of great personal importance, selling them as unassuming trinkets that could potentially hold dangerous, hidden power. Lee Harvey bought something at his shop, something we needed to find as quickly as possible.

On my way out, I saw his corpse under a sheet. I stopped and I had to sit down. That man had power even in death.

They called me a conspiracy.

I felt his Ascension coming a mile a way and I had to stop it.

My first touch with the magick came when I was in Detroit investigating a new engine that would grant the prototype unheard of mileage and energy efficiency. The work was considered too revolutionary for the era, so it was confiscated and destroyed. Knowing that unbelievable secret gave me my first taste of the Magick. I had learned long ago that knowledge is power. Locked away inside me, the secret became something mystical, granting me control over the known.

But power is never enough. Secrets have to be compounded to strengthen their effect. I needed more, my magick demanded it. Then many years later, I found out I had competition, who was stealing secrets which should have been mine.

His name was President John F. Kennedy.

I'd learned of Roswell, and had compiled the largest database of secrets and organizations in the known world, but the President was in a position that granted him every opportunity. He had tapped the mystical well known as Marilyn Monroe, and her death only fed that mythology. Something big and important had happened in Cuba, and I had no idea what it was. My feelers only felt so far. The truth was not what was televised. Communism was not the enemy. This man was coming so very close to the biggest secret of all, and I had to put a stop to it.

I set up shop in Dallas after coming from a voodoo ritual in New Orleans. I imprinted militia-bought rifles with suggestion and sold one of my secrets to a major newspaper to charge the ammunition with enough power to bring down a god. I sold those three rifle kits to a store along the procession route, and watched it all fall apart.

My name was John Kennedy and my death was my salvation. It was also the biggest secret, puzzle and enigma of the era. When the first bullet rocked me, I felt the secret of the universe flow into my soul. When my head evaporated, I had already become something else entirely. J. Edgar, who had more secrets than anybody on this planet and helped create some of the biggest conspiracies known to mankind, was the mastermind who unknowingly orchestrated my Ascension. The nature and uncertainty of my assassination rocked this nation, and shaped an era, a generation. He made me the Prince of Secrets when I became the epicenter for modern mythology.