This is Episode 9 of American Horror Story season 1.5 - Murder House Revisited. At this point you probably won't be too confused if you haven't read the other episodes. But some parts may leave you wondering if you haven't. If you enjoy this, I encourage you to read the rest.

My brave lad he sleeps in his faded coat of blue,
In a lonely grave unknown lies the heart that beat so true.
He sank faint and hungry among the famished brave,
And they laid him sad and lonely within his nameless grave.

A Faded Coat of Blue - J.H. McNaughton

...

1994

The red dots of several laser scopes were trained on Tate's chest. He had his hands up. He could hear his mother screaming somewhere beyond the room. Everything sounded hollow. Time was running so slowly it felt like it was winding down. He couldn't stop shaking even though he was smiling. He didn't know if it was the drugs or adrenaline. He wasn't afraid.

The SWAT team filled his bedroom. He had no idea so many people could fit in the room. Behind the black wall of men bristling with automatic weapons he could see Mrs. Nora. It was the first time as a teen that she saw him and knew him immediately, despite his age. Maybe it was the danger he was in that made her remember him. Whatever the case, he knew he wasn't alone.

She passed effortlessly through the line of emergency personnel without their notice. She had a lace handkerchief in one hand and a strange look on her tear-streaked face: A blend of concern, despair, and... understanding. She knew her house was about to claim another victim. One she'd tried so hard to save.

Tate lifted his hand to his temple in a motion just like De Niro did in that movie, Taxi Driver, when he was cornered by the cops. Just like Nora had shot her husband so many years before. Tate mouthed the explosion the gun would have made. He was telling her his final plan. He wasn't scared. Even though his eyes were brim full of tears, he was ready. He'd been ready for months.

The SWAT team didn't understand what he was doing. They got nervous. Nora paced closer, weeping silently. She brought her hands together before her in a way that resembled prayer, the handkerchief clutched between them. Tate dove for the gun hidden under his pillow. He intended to use it to kill himself with - he wasn't going to go to prison. But the SWAT didn't know his plan and made one of their own.

He only felt the first two bullets out of the volley that struck him but he felt the floor hit his back when he fell. It knocked the wind out of him and he couldn't pull another breath to replace it. His lungs wouldn't work. A man put his face up close to Tate's and shouted questions but it was gibberish to the fatally injured teen. All he could focus on was the hot wetness that was spreading out beneath him. He wondered if he'd pissed himself then he realized it was blood. He tried to laugh but the only thing that came out was more blood.

Then the man was gone and Mrs. Nora's face was the next one he saw. She was still silently crying but now she was smiling gently at him as well. She pet his messy hair and held his hand and everything went dark for a long time.

When he finally woke Nora helped him to his feet and away from the scene of his death before he could register anything. His body had already been removed by the officers but there was still blood everywhere. She paused only long enough to grab the stack of clothes she'd gathered for him, including one of his favorite sweaters. The she took him to the basement where she could help him get cleaned up and, more importantly, where she could shelter him from the invaders who would come searching Murder House for answers they wouldn't find.

...

░A░m░e░r░i░c░a░n░ ░H░o░r░r░o░r░ ░S░t░o░r░y░

...

1994 - 2 days after the shootings

"Terror at Westfield," the blonde newscaster announced grimly from behind her sheaf of papers. "Two days after the tragic shootings at the Los Angeles high school, detectives are still no closer to understanding what drove a seemingly normal young man to commit the nation's worst school shooting."

The image switched to one filmed outside of Westfield High School. It was footage taken from the day of the shootings. Three teens were clustered around a reporter's microphone, faces stained with tears and drawn with shock and emotional trauma.

"I was hiding under the desk," one girl said. She hiccupped on a sob and forced herself to keep talking even though it was difficult. "And I saw him walk by and the girl hiding across from me... he just shot her in the face."

"There was sooo much blood. It was everywhere," the girl next to her said and burst into silent tears. The boy with them hugged her and looked like he wanted to cry too but he didn't. He just held his friend while she wept and he focused on the school building surrounded by patrol cars and ambulances.

The blonde newscaster was on the screen again and this time there was a little picture above her right shoulder. It was yearbook photo of Tate Langdon when he was in the 7th grade, even though he was in the 11th grade when he shot up Westfield. It was a dorky picture: His hair was a mess, looking like a bird's nest atop his head. He'd been asking the photographer if he should smile yet when the picture snapped so he had a wide-eyed look. It would have been adorkably cute if it weren't for the fact that it was being associated with 15 murders.

"Why?" The blonde woman intoned. "That's what a shocked nation wants to know. Why did a seemingly normal middle class high-schooler set fire to a man and then go on a killing spree at his school? The world may never truly know what motivated the murders. Investigators have seized documents and a computer from the family home but no further information has been made available."

She turned in her chair to face another camera and another picture popped up over her shoulder, this one a still shot of the school from afar, emergency vehicles and news vans parked all around. "Were there warning signs that were missed?" she asked gravely. "Friends of the shooter say they knew he was troubled but that they never thought he could do something like this."

The reporter disappeared, replace by more video footage. A teen boy in a long black coat addressed the microphone. Another guy, this one with a black spiked mohawk and Goth guy-liner, stood behind him looking grim.

"People picked on him," the teen in the black coat said. He was in Tate's biology class. They weren't friends but they weren't enemies either. He just wanted people to know what he saw. "The jocks. They called him names. Pushed him around. I guess it just... Maybe it got to be too much for him."

The footage jumped to another side of the school where two young men stood with another reporter. One was wearing a baseball cap sporting the school's mascot, the Wolverine. The other teen had a buzz-cut and a scar in one eyebrow.

"His whole family practices witchcraft," the first boy said with a grimace. He wasn't a friend of Tate's. He didn't even know Tate. He just wanted to be on television. "You could tell he was on the edge. You'd see him walking down the halls? And you'd just want to get out of his way. He didn't have any respect for anybody."

"He was gay," the guy with the buzz-cut told the reporter solemnly. He knew Tate but they'd never been friends. Quite the opposite.

Then the blonde newscaster was back. "Investigators say that the last of the bodies have been removed from the school. They are still in the process of identifying the victims. Parents of children who are still missing are encouraged to bring copies of dental records to the county coroner's office to aid in this process."

She turned in her chair again and the picture over her shoulder was of the local basketball team logo. "Major League Baseball has announced that all Los Angeles games for the next two weeks have been postponed."

Another video clip showed the Angels' coach behind a podium crowded with dozens of microphones. "In the wake of the recent tragedy," he said in a trembling voice. "The team just doesn't have the heart to play. We hope our fans respect and understand this decision. All passes will be honored at the next game that's played."

The reporter was back again. "In national news, the President has canceled his trip to inspect the Florida wetlands preserve in order to visit Los Angeles."

The President popped onscreen and droned sadly about solidarity and tragedy and how the American spirit would overcome. Then the show cut to a commercial for fabric softener.

...

Author's Note:

When I first saw AHS Season 1, I thought Tate was wearing a trench coat, like the Columbine shooters. It wasn't till I started thinking to do a Halloween costume based on Tate's skull-faced shooter that I discovered it wasn't a trench coat at all. It was a Prussian blue Union soldier's Civil War frock coat. I figure it's probably something Constance had from her acting days, although California was a Union state so who knows where it came from. In reality it was probably what was on hand in the wardrobe department.

After the shootings at Columbine the media shamelessly played whatever they could attach to the tragedy without checking facts. Several people told reporters things that weren't even remotely true. It didn't matter to the media as long as they had something sensational to keep viewers from changing the channel. So they played the false reports round the clock, over and over again, till some misinformation became inseparable from what was real. Nearly 15 years later some of those rumors still persist and will probably never go away.

The boy who said Tate was gay is Douglas, the same guy who gave him a hard time in the library (and many other places at school). I thought about letting Tate kill him but I didn't want Tate to have to deal with him for the rest of eternity. There are already a couple of guys (friends of Douglas') that are bad enough without having their ringleader present. So Douglas gets to grow old, fat, bald, get married and divorced, have kids who never write and prostate cancer that'll kill him when he's 62. Fair? I don't know. But that's life.

Next chapter: Halloween. Are you ready for this? The Dead Breakfast Club has been waiting years for it. Also: Ben and Patrick have a chat, whether Pat wants to or not.