Blood Lite

I. Hotter than the Hinges of Hell

Well, ain't this just a kicker? Here I am, lyin' in a pile of my own mess on the goddamned bathroom floor, the life runnin outta me faster than shit through a duck, my favor­ite silk pajamas twisted around my ankles—and I know what all you sonsuvbitches are gonna say: you're gonna talk about how I died takin' a shit . . . too many peanut butter and nanner sandwiches ... massive heart attack ... clogged arteries . . . drug overdose . . . tongue all hangin' out and disgusting looking and all sorts of other bullshit not befitting the death of a king.

Well, let me just set the record straight here, folks: The King of Rock 'n' Roll didn't die on no shitter.

No siree, Bob.

And I sure as hell didn't die of no drug overdose, either. Contrary to popular belief, I didn't take goddamned drugs. Hell, I hated drugs. Wish I coulda wiped out every drug dealer on the planet. Even had a plan to lure 'em into Grace-land, then have me and the rest of the Memphis Mafia (always loved that nickname, by the way) unload on 'em with a bunch of Uzis, but—alas—that plan never came to be: I moved on to a fleeting obsession with horses, bought me a whole ranch of 'em, and by the time I remembered the drug dealer thing, I'd sort of just... moved on.

But back to this little matter of my demise: Hard as it might sound to believe, the King of Rock 'n' Roll died from exposure to sunlight.

Same way all vampires do.

All the freaky shit started after I wrapped Change of Habit—and the less said about that picture, the better: I mean, Lord have mercy, there ain't enough lipstick in the world to gussy up that pig. Change of Habit ended up being the final movie I made, and it sure as hell wasn't a case of savin' my best for last. Habit was one of my worst pictures (I'd put it right up there with Girls! Girls! Girls! and Harum Scarum for those of you keepin' score).

After the critical and commercial beating the picture took I was feeling pretty low. Looking for some excite­ment in my life. A way to capture something that I'd lost somehow, somewhere along the way. Something that'd make me feel like I did when Sam Phillips and Scotty Moore and Bill Black and me cut our first record at Sun back in '54; or like when the three of us did the Louisiana Hayride; or when the Colonel got me my first big record deal with RCA; or like watching nekked girls wrestle with each other and hopin' they'd kiss; or—hell—even the feel­ing I got as recently as the year before, when I made "The '68 Comeback Special." Christ Almighty, folks loved that show. Me? I thought it was just okay. Some of the musical numbers were pretty hokey, even by the standards of the time, but-—boy oh boy—did the ladies flip for that black leather outfit Bill Belew designed for me. Thing was hot­ter than the hinges of hell, but it got me more poontang than most men see in three lifetimes.

Priscilla and I had fallen on hard times—I think she was datin' her dance instructor, and I was dating just about anything that had two arms, two eyes, and a fish taco between its legs—so I had started up the old ritual I had with the boys of renting out the Memphian for a bunch of all-night movie marathons that summer.

On this particular night, it was late May/early June of '68, I was in a funky kind of mood, so I had Hamburger James pick up prints of three fittingly offbeat movies: Planet of the Apes (man, I wanted to serve those damned dirty apes a helping of King-Fu), 2001: A Space Odys­sey (fuckin' thing made no sense—I think the reels were mixed up or somethin' because a giant kid was born at the end of the picture!), and Madigan (pretty good crime flick; little gritty for my taste, though).

By the time the credits were rolling on the last movie, it was almost five in the morning. The sun would be up soon, and we were all durn near exhausted—which might explain why I ignored the First Rule of Being Rich.

First Rule of Being Rich?

Never Do Something Yourself that You Can Pay Somebody to Do for You.

Yet me, Elvis Motherfucking Presley, one of the rich­est sonsuvabitches in America?

I ignored the rule.

And that's when the rest of the night—hell, the rest of my life—really started goin' south. You thought Clambake was bad, what happened next made Clambake look like Gone With the Fucking Wind.

Hamburger James had split early—something about his wife goin' into labor or some shit like that—so that meant David Stanley, my second-in-command (and stepbrother), was supposed to return the film reels back to the guy we rented 'em from. But David was feeling under the weather, and I could tell he really didn't wanna make the trip. Look­ing back, I think I was just searching for something new to do—some new spin on old habits; some way to recon­nect with something that was dead inside my soul—so I offered to drive the truck and return the canisters of film myself. You know, get away for a little while—even if it was only for an hour or so.

Everyone looked at me like I'd just sworn off pussy for a year, but I assured 'em it was something I wanted to do.

Alone.

You see ... I was getting tired of the crowds of people always around me. I know, I know: I only had myself to blame. I was the one who put all my friends on payroll and made 'em leave their wives and kids to be at my beck and call 24/7, but still. A man needs some time to himself once in a while, and, like I said, there was something about that summer that had me in a bit of a funk. I was only thirty-four, but I felt old, baby. Like they say, it's the terrain not the mileage—and I had seen me some pretty rough terrain through the years.

So with no small amount of reluctance, the fellas packed the film canisters into the back of the truck, and I waved good-bye as I headed out into the darkness of early morning.

Lemme tell you something. It was thrilling.

There were no cars on the road, and it took me back to the days before I became the most famous man on the planet; took me back to almost fifteen years ago, when I was nineteen years old and driving a delivery truck for Crown Electric.

As the quiet highway spread out before me, the dark sky began to turn into the beautiful purples and pinks you only find in Memphis, and it was suddenly like . . . like time traveling or something. For a few minutes there I was that fresh-faced kid again, with a tender heart, big dreams . . . and no idea how quickly dreams turned into nightmares. Gone was the hardened man who could trust no one, including his friends and family. Life was normal—or at least what I imagined normal to be—and it felt like I was on my way home from a long night of mak­ing deliveries, my pretty little wife waiting for me in our modest house, our children fast asleep in their small but cozy bedrooms, the world unaware of my existence.

I smiled at the thought, looked out at the horizon as the sunlight began to swing its golden scythe across the fields in the distance, cutting down night into day.

Which is when I ran over him.

I saw the poor bastard standing in the middle of the road out of the corner of my eye and slammed on the brakes.

But not soon enough.

The scraggly-looking kid's body made a disgusting thud as the truck slammed into him, his face shattering the windshield, his body flipping end over end before finally landing on the pavement behind the truck like a sack'a moldy potatoes.

Since these are probably my last words before I leave this mortal coil, I guess honesty is the best policy: I have to admit, first thing I thought about was how royally this was going to screw things up. Last thing I needed was all the bad publicity running over some kid in the middle of the night was gonna bring me. I mean, shit, it's one thing to daydream about a life lived without riches, driving a truck for a living, renting a small house somewhere out in the middle of nowhere—but it's another to actually lose all of your riches, women, and earthly possessions.

No thank you. Me and my daddy and my momma were dirt poor back in Tupelo, and the thought of goin' back to anything resembling that type of life was terrifying.

It's good to be the King, and I wasn't in no hurry to give up my crown just yet.

I stared in the rearview mirror at the dead body splat­tered across the pavement, and all I could think of was how bad I wished I was lying in my bed at Graceland, Grandma cooking up some eggs and bacon and sausage and taters and waffles and biscuits with gravy and grits and corned beef hash for breakfast.

I could feel my foot on the gas pedal, itching to hit the road. It'd be so easy to tap that sucker down real quick-like and drive away ... but I'm happy to report that the angels of my better nature prevailed. I was a good ol' boy at heart, and rather than hightail it out of there, I turned off the ignition, got out of the truck, and wandered over to the kid to see if there was anything I could do to help him. Lordy lordy lordy, was he was in bad shape. Just lookin at him gave me a case of the willies, and I knew it'd be a long time before I'd get the image of his splintered face out of my mind. It took everything I had to keep my nachos and hot dogs and popcorn and soda and M&Ms down—and it was just when I thought I was gonna hurl all over the dead sonuvabitch that he opened his eyes.

Let me repeat that:

The fucker was dead, but he opened his motherfucking eyes.

Which made him undead, see?

And before I knew what the hell was goin on, he sat up straighter 'n my pecker right before a threesome and grabbed me by the neck. I tried a little of the old Elvis-Fu (the karate technique I tried, if you want to know, was Heavenly Ascent), but the kid was just too durned strong: my elbow glanced off his chin without him letting out so much as a yelp.

He got to his feet real quick-like, raising me up off the ground as if I was lighter than a box a doughnuts, and I tried some more karate, but it was pointless.

I ain't gonna lie to you: I was scared, man.

Real scared.

But even bein' afraid, I wasn't gonna cry like a little baby about it. Hell no. This sonuvabitch wanted to tussle, we was gonna tussle. I kicked him in the nuts, but the dude must've been wearin' a cup or somethin' because it didn't faze him; he just kept holdin' me two or three feet off the ground with that monstrously strong arm.

I'd finally had enough, looked the bastard square in the eyes: "You better finish this thing, baby, cuz I'm Elvis Aaron Presley; you don't kill me now, I'm gonna make your life a livin' hell!"

The fella cocked his head as if I was speakin' gibber­ish.

Was it possible there was somebody in the world—in Memphis, no less—who hadn't heard of me?

I was stunned—until his eyes flickered in dim recog­nition, and he uttered with vocal cords gravelly as kitty litter:

"The Kiiiiing!"

I nodded. "That's right, son, the King," and the excited look in the kid's eyes suddenly filled with fear. But after a few moments, I realized it wasn't me he was afraid of:

I followed his gaze over my shoulder, discovered that the dude was staring at the risin' sun on the horizon. He was freakin' out. Frankly, I didn't give a shit if it was my words or the damned sunlight that had put the fear a God into him; all I cared about was gettin' away from this creepy fucker.

He started to go weak in the knees—but right before we fell to the ground he opened his mouth real wide. I winced at the sight of his mouth full of teeth: there were just too many of 'em, and they were all pointy and sharp, like ... like—

Oh shit.

This sonuvabitch was a vampire.

A real-life goddamned bloodsucker.

His wounds started to heal right before my eyes . . . like .. . like he was Jesus Christ or something ... and the wider his mouth opened, the more I realized he was about to turn me into an Elvis sandwich.

He moved forward, started to wrap his lips around my neck.

Last thing I remember before passing out was smackin' him real hard and tellin' him I wasn't into none of that gay shit.

II. The Mother of Invention

The Colonel was pissed.

How in the hell was I supposed to make any more movies if I couldn't be out in the sun? That was the whole formula: get me drivin' a race car or a motorcycle or a speedboat, pair it with a snazzy location (Hawaii, Acapulco, Florida, Arabia, what have you), and—voila!—two weeks later you had yourself a motion picture.

But that was PV, baby: Pre~Vehis. Some of the fellas in the Memphis Mafia took to teasin' me about gettin' myself turned into a damned vampire, thought it was a real hoot to call me "Velvis, the Vampire Elvis." That might seem like a funny reaction to you, but David and Jerry and Red and Lamar and the rest of the boys—they were used to crazy shit happenin' all the time. Vampirism was just one more once-in-a-lifetime thing to add to their big old list of once-in-a-lifetime things that happened while hangin' out with yours truly. Besides, what were they gonna do? Quit? Hell, I paid all their bills, bought 'em houses and Cadillacs and all kinds of shit. They learned how to deal with the Big E bein' a vampire—with smiles on their god­damned faces.

But dealing with the Colonel was a different matter. All that fat old man saw was the bottom line—and there was no way I could be on location makin' movies since the sun did somethin' nasty to my skin. Twenty seconds out in the sunlight, and my damned flesh started to melt right off.

But, truth be told, I was kind of relieved. I was tired of the movies anyway, and as long as we could keep the whole vampire thing out of the press (you have no idea how much shit we kept out of the press; this wouldn't be too difficult), I was glad to have me an out. Thirty-one pictures was a lot of celluloid, baby—only problem was the fact that about twenty-eight of 'em were crap.

But even though my body of work in the screen trade can best be described as "quantity over quality," good or bad, very few people have made more pictures than me.

It was time for a new chapter of my life to begin.

Velvis had turned the page.

So while the Colonel figured out how to keep the Elvis Train rollin', me and the boys started tryin' to make the whole "creature of the night" thing work for me. Tell you the truth, it wasn't much of a stretch. I'd essentially switched days and nights years ago, staying up all night and then sleeping all day, so I was used to being a night owl, and all the stores and restaurants and movie theaters all across the country would stay open all night for Elvis Presley and a few of his friends with one simple phone call.

Frankly, a vampire never had it so good.

But, sure, there were a few physical difficulties to get used to—like the time I didn't get to bed until after the sun was up (nevermind the fact that, as usual, I'd been inside all night): the light blasted through the windows in Graceland like a bucking bronco, and I had to take cover beneath a few passed-out groupies while the boys scram­bled around to get all the windows closed and hang drapes over 'em and shit like that. The next night I had David and Red and Lamar hang a bunch of tinfoil on the win­dows to block out the sunlight the next morning—and we were happy as the devil at the crossroads to discover that it worked perfectly.

Within a few days the whole house was covered in the stuff, and I'll be damned if Graceland didn't turn out to be the fanciest vampire coffin you ever saw. Tinfoil came to be sort of a precautionary habit with me, so if I had to be driven anywhere during the day the boys would tinfoil all the car windows the night before. Same with all the air­planes and hotel rooms and any other space I might need to use during daylight hours.

I also had to stop wearing the crosses I was so fond of, because they burnt something fierce against my skin.

One time it got so bad, my chest started smokin', and Sonny had to blast me with a fire extinguisher. But, as my momma, Gladys, taught me to do so well, I eventu­ally turned lemons into lemon meringue pie: I had Lowell Hays, my jeweler out in Beverly Hills, design me a bunch of TCB pendants to wear instead, and those went on to signify my personal style and sense of individuality better than some frumpy old crucifix. Hell, by that point in my life I wasn't even sure the ol' Gray Beard existed anyway, and the TCB thing seemed much more inclusive.

Another tough thing to get used to was the cravings. God Almighty, did I wanna suck me some blood. And I tried it once, but it made me puke all the waffles and sausage and pork rinds and Popsicles I'd had for breakfast right back up. I just couldn't never get used to bitin' into some poor chicks neck—and I sure as hell wasn't gonna bite into no dude's neck.

Yet, having all the money in the world enables you to get creative—which is where the drug rumors started. I decided that I'd just have my good friend Dr. Nick inject me with blood once every coupla days or so. It beat the hell out of suckin' blood, and it allowed me to prevent turnin' anybody else into a vampire, something that would be a pain in the ass for someone without my resources.

Only problem with the injections—aside from the drug rumors—was that it made me get all bloated after a bad transfusion a few years back. You think I didn't know I'd gotten fat, baby? You think if it was just a matter of cuttin' back on the cheeseburgers I wouldn't a done it? C'mon, give the King some credit. The blood transfusions took a toll, but it was the only way I could avoid eatin' some poor bastard, so I kept on doin' it—whether it made me fat or not.

But now I'm just complainin'; feelin' sorry for myself. Truth is, for a while there, the whole vampire thing was great. I was lookin' lean and mean, losin' weight faster than a hooker loses her panties, and I experienced an increase in my physical abilities. I mean, let's face it: before I was turned into a vampire, I wasn't exactly the world's greatest karate master. Yeah, I tried hard, and practiced all the time (and paid Ed Parker and Kang Rhee a shitload of money to make me an eighth-degree black belt), but you look at those pictures where I was tryin' to show my stuff— pictures like Blue Hawaii or Speedway—and you can tell: I wasn't exactly a natural.

Now take a look at the concert footage of my acts in Vegas—after I'd been "turned:" I'm like a whole different cat out there, baby. I'm the Tiger Man. I'm nimble and fast and able to bend my legs one way and my torso another and my arms still another. My strength and dexterity were superhuman. Literally. And for a year or two, I was grate­ ful to be a nosferatu.

The Colonel knew the only way to keep the gravy train rollin' was to find some way for me to perform to a crowd in a controlled environment, where I'd be out of the sun­light, and able to stay indoors all day if necessary.

Sound familiar?

You said it, bubba: Viva Las Vegas! indeed.

It was perfect, really. Like my hairdresser, Larry Geller, used to say: Necessity is the mother of invention.

We woulda never played Vegas for all those years if it wasn't necessary for me to stay out of the sun. I'd a prob­ably made another thirty pictures, and never had that great second-to-last (that's "penultimate" for all you college boys out there who think I don't have me a good vocabulary) chapter of my life before the infamous fall from grace. So, I don't know, even though my time in Vegas eventually brought me a bad case of the bloodsucker blues, I'm still grateful for the bumps in the road that led me there. And even though it was the whole vampire thing that led to my early demise, I'm still sorta glad for the experience.

The shows themselves? They were Fuckin' Great with a capital Fuckin'. Go look at the tapes—you'll see. Long as we made sure my microphone wasn't made of silver and room service didn't put no garlic on my burgers, I was a pelvis-gyratin', lei-wearin', kiss-givin', sexy sonuvabitch. A pure hunka hunka burnin' love if ever there was one.

But ... a funny thing started happenin' during the shows. I can't really describe it any other way than to say I started to get something like . . . like a Spidey sense about other vampires {Spider-Man was my second favor­ite comic, by the way, right behind Captain America. Hot damn, I loved me that Captain America ... even thought about having Bill Belew design me a shield or somethin' I could take out onstage and work into my act... but.. . level heads prevailed and I eventually dropped it...).

This Spidey sense—it was real odd: I'd be doin' my thing up onstage, and all of a sudden I'd start gettin' this ... this . . . buzzing feeling. Like I'd just drank a pot of coffee on an empty stomach. I'd have to stop movin' my hips for a minute to get my balance, and the first time it hit me, I happened to look out into the crowd, and I focused in on a pack of scumbags sittin' in the cheap seats. They smiled at me kinda knowingly-like—

And that's when I noticed their fangs.

Now, just so you know, I was not into the whole fang thing. Talk about puttin the brakes on the Pussy Express. Lemme tell you: fangs? Not attractive, baby. Not in the least. So along with doing my hair and personal groom­ing, Larry Geller also started filing my teeth down every two or three days. Again, like everything else, it was no big deal, and we just sort of made it part of our normal routine: hair, manicure, pedicure, teethicure. We found that a really coarse stock of sandpaper did the trick, and if we were really in a pinch, using a nail file also worked.

But these vampires in the cheap seats? They were livin' the vida vampira and they were damned proud of it. They made no attempt to hide their fangs—least, not from me—and even though I quickly realized they meant me no harm, I was troubled to read the papers the next day. Turned out a group of teens had been found murdered, their necks ripped open as if attacked by wild animals, their bodies drained of blood.

I knew those bloodsuckers I saw at my show were responsible, and it made me feel guilty about bein' one myself. I began to wonder if there was something I coulda done to save those poor kids.

I tried to put it out of my mind and carry on with the shows. But my Spidey sense (or "vamp vibe" as me and the boys started callin' it) would always remind me of the life I was leading. It would come and go depending on how close I was to a vampire or how many of them there were, but—just like my martial arts training—the more I stud­ied the sensation of the vamp vibe, the more in tune with it I became ... until I realized that there were vampires all around us all the time.

A whole army of bloodsucking nosferatus.

A vampire nation, if you will.

Like all things in life (especially for yours truly), after a while the Vegas routine got a little . . . stale. Even aside from my increasing awareness of vampires, there was some dark undertone to the gigs after a while. In a nutshell with chocolate on top? I got bored, baby.

The whole thing started to feel a little bit empty. Sure, Sammy Davis Jr. and Liberace and Tom Jones and Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson and Brian Wilson and Muhammad Ali and all those celebrities a few rungs down the ladder from me would come and hang out and pay their respects and sing with me back in the penthouse after the show (none of'em remotely aware that I was a bloodsucker), but... I don't know... it just got... well.. .old.

I began to resent the life bein' a vampire had forced me into. I yearned to quit the Vegas gig, maybe make another picture or two out in some exotic locale, and then play a game of football with the boys in the lawn behind Grace-land, the afternoon sun baking our skin into a golden brown.

But those days were to be no more. All because some faggoty vampire had sucked on my damn neck. Hell, after a few weeks of stewin' on it, I realized I was downright pissed.

Things started comin' to a head one night in my pent­house suite. It was the middle of the night, the loneliest time in the world, between three and four in the morning. Everyone who came back to the room after the show had passed out long ago, and the sun wouldn't be up for another couple hours. I felt like Charlton Heston in that movie The Omega Man; felt like I was the last man alive on the whole goddamned planet. I went to my window, pulled the cur­tains back to get a good look at the world below. Seeing the neon planet so lonely and quiet and dark filled me with sadness and made me happy all at once. I felt at peace and unsettled. I was folly human in that moment ('least, as folly human as a vampire can be) . . . until I got a blast of the vamp vibe so strong it almost knocked me on my ass.

I glanced toward some flash of action in a dark alley on the streets below, my attention drawn to some distant scuffle. I watched for a moment, wanted to see what would happen, quickly realized that some heavyset older woman was runnin' from a pack of mean-lookin' dudes.

There was somethin' about the woman that reminded me of my momma. I felt sorry for the poor gal, and I was horrified when the pack of dudes chasin' her opened their mouths wide ...

Too wide ... too familiar . .. then pounced on her.

Helpless, the woman could do nothing but let them feed on her, those chubby legs twitching spasmodically as they slammed her up against a Dumpster and started to drain her of her blood.

And it didn't help matters any when I looked out my window a few weeks later and saw that same chubby old gal wanderin' around outside, confused as a doughnut in a deli, shamblin' along in a blood daze, hungry for the red stuff, but without the means or the know-how to get herself any. Turned.

It was like seein' my momma reincarnated as some kind of bloodsuckin' freak, and it pissed me off somethin' fierce. All those vampire sonsuvbitches out there? They were ruinin' lives left and right, without a care in the world for people's rights or good old-fashioned American decency.

And then it hit me, my "moment of clarity": Yeah, sure, I was doin' all right, takin' care of business, all that shit. But look at me.

Look at what the vampirism had done to me beneath my perfect public persona: I was a mess, and I knew it. 'Cilia and I had finally called it quits a few years back, and I hardly ever saw my little girl because of the hours being a vampire forced me to keep.

Those assholes had ruined my life—'least, they put the last nail in the coffin, pun intended.

It was then—right then and right motherfucking there—that I decided to do somethin' about it. I decided to execute every last one of those leeches. I decided to turn myself into a steamroller, baby, and roll all over their skuzzy vampire asses.

III. Napalm Bomb with a Goddamned Pompadour

So we scrapped the Vegas act.

And for once the Colonel and the Memphis Mafia were in agreement with each other: everybody hated the idea of trading the life of Vegas penthouse luxury for the day-to-day rigors of the road.

But the road it was. My mind was set.

I couldn't sit back and let the vampires win with­out putting up a fight, and a cross-country tour was the perfect cover for me to get out there and hunt those evil sonsuvbitches down. The Vegas gigs had cemented my reputation as the world's biggest entertainment draw, which allowed me to tour the country nonstop until the end of my days, no questions asked.

Life was basically the same as when we were in Vegas, only this time my penthouse became a tour bus, and rather than go back to the room at night, I'd go out huntin'.

Once in a while some of the boys would come with me, and it turned out that my stepbrother David had a real knack for vampire huntin'; he was real good at cuttin' their bloodsucking heads off after I shot 'em full of silver bullets, which is why I nicknamed him The Headhunter (thanks, again, to my private jeweler, Low­ell Hayes, silver bullets were very easy to come by; as you might've guessed, Lowell even designed 'em with a bit of the ol' Elvis flare: they had little TCB insignias in their tips).

Mostly, though, the boys couldn't keep up: they pre­ferred to load up my guns with those specially made silver TCB bullets and send me on my way. And who can blame 'em? A night of vampire huntin' was filled with all kinds of jumpin' and wrasslin' and kickin' and killin'. It wasn't work that appealed to ordinary human beings, and—even though the Memphis Mafia was an extraordinary group of guys—they were certainly still human.

And you know what? I really didn't mind goin' out alone. It gave me that solitude I'd been searchin' for over the years. That peace of mind. Aside from the blood and the carnage and the all-around mayhem, it was sort of... peaceful. Kind of... Zen, I guess you'd call it.

While we're on the subject of my vampire huntin', lemme ask you somethin': You've heard the stories about Presi­dent Nixon taking a meeting with me, and then bestowin' the government's highest law-enforcement badge on me, right? You've seen the pictures, right? You know it really happened, right? That it ain't some bullshit myth in a life admittedly riddled with bullshit myths? Then lemme ask you: Why in the hell do you think the president gave me the badge in the first place?

It weren't for no sharp-shootin', lemme tell ya. It was for exterminating vampires, kiddo. The White House is almost as wired into the cultural landscape of these glorious United States of America as Graceland is, and so it was only a matter of time before the Powers That Be recognized they had a real vampire problem on their hands. Granting me the status of federal agent allowed me to carry a firearm on my person at all times, and to shoot a perpetrator in the line of fire. I see a vampire gnawin' on somebody's jugular? Blam-o! blood­sucker. No questions asked.

So President Nixon knew what I was up to, and I bet if you could find the time to sift through all of those tapes that paranoid sonuvabitch made, he'd mention something about it. I hope so—it sure as hell would clear up a lot about the last few years of my life for the fans out there. At least my little girl would know how her daddy really died.

And so the federal agent badge from the president. .. the weight gain from the blood transfusions ... the super­human improvement of my karate skills ... even the addi­tion of". . . in a flash" to "Takin' Care of Business . . ." (which became my code for "blast those vampires with sunlight, baby!")—it all makes a bit more sense now, don't it? I mean, you really think I was dumb enough to sit back and blow holes through all my TVs because I was too lazy to change the channel?

Guess again, son.

Whenever shit'd get shot up, you can bet your ass I was in the midst of a fight for my life, blastin' bloodsuckers left and right, things gettin' squirrelly all around me.

Vampire huntin', baby. It's a bitch.

I'm happy to report that as my beloved tour bus zigzagged across this great country of ours, I sent thousands of those wretched leeches to their eternal damnation. I was like a napalm bomb with a goddamned pompadour, baby. My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, bang-bang, bloodsucker, go fuck yourself.

And like a lot of things about my career, I took a little "inspiration" from the black community (and don't you dare call it "stealing"). Huntin' those bloodsuckers, I saw myself as something of a honkey Shaft, which should also help explain why I got into the whole cape thing: it was my version of Shaft's trench coat; my version of a superhero, which is exactly what I was for the last several years of my life, keeping the streets clean, saving all of you unsuspect­ing citizens from those nasty fanged rodents.

Yet, as my daddy used to say, when you set out to drain the swamp it always starts out good, but eventually you realize you're up to your ass in alligators.

Like most everything I did with my life, my reputation began to precede me, and pretty soon every goddamned nosferatu sonuvabitch from here to Timbuktu heard that the King was kickin' ass and takin' names. Things got real sketchy for a while there, and the Colonel and the boys thought it'd be a good idea for me to hang up my spurs for a few months, get some rest back at Graceland, recharge the ol' batteries for a little while.

I didn't like the idea of quittin' somethin' midstream, but everyone assured me I wasn't quittin' nothin'. This was just a little hiatus. I'd gained about seventy pounds from all the bad blood transfusions, and my eyes were more sensitive than ever to ultraviolet radiation (that's the shit that's in the sunshine, for those of you of a less "scientific" persuasion; and it's also the reason I was always wearin' those big-ass shades at the end of my life—again, everything has a rea­son, baby; I wasn't as loony as everybody thought).

This little hiatus was to be a time to lose a little weight, get back to some all-night movie marathons at the Memphian (there was this science fiction flick everybody'd lost their minds for called Star Wars that I was dyin' to see), and bang a boatload of broads to see if I couldn't force the ever-present thoughts of Priscilla outta my mind. It was a good idea.

It was a great plan. It was not to be.

August 16, 1977. The vampires finally got the last laugh. Like I said, I'd become so prolific at exterminatin' blood­suckers they'd finally had enough. They got together and decided it was time to put an end to my shenanigans: They sent a pack of southern-fried nosferatus my way, and, bein' vampires and all, they didn't have any trouble sneakin' past the front gates and creepin' into my bedroom at Grace-land.

It was about four in the morning, and I'd just finished reading a great book called The Necronomicon, which was all about Egyptian lore and methods for battling deadly creatures (contrary to popular belief, I loved to read, and I'd devoured just about everything pertaining to the undead).

As I'm sure you're well aware, as luck would have it, heading into the final hours of my demise, I had to relieve my damned bowels.

And it was while takin' a blue ribbon shit that I got a mean ol' case of the vamp vibes, and heard a commotion in the bedroom outside the bathroom door. The girl I was seein' at the time, Ginger, let out a quick scream, but it was immediately muffled, like by a pillow or somethin'.

Silk pajamas still wrapped around my ankles, I jumped off the commode and busted from the bathroom—only to find my little honey pie knocked out on the bed. I was puzzled, whispered, "Ginger?"

She didn't say nothin' back—but my eyes went wide when out of the shadows of the bedroom I heard a familiar curdled voice: "The Kiiiiiiing!"

I turned toward the voice, but was a little too late: a group of redneck bloodsuckers hit me over the back of the head and knocked me to the ground.

And then, wouldn't you just know it? That same fugly (that's "fuckin' ugly") sonuvabitch who'd turned me into a vampire all those years ago was leaning over me.

He was smiling as he got real close to my face and taunted me: "The Kiiiiing is dead."

Yep. "Et tu, Brute?" and all that shit. I mean, yeah, like I said, my reputation had spread from sea to shining sea, and it didn't really surprise me that a small faction of the vampire nation would eventually band together to elim­inate me—it's just that I never thought they'd take me down in my own house, man. That's just.. . rude, you ask me. But ... anyway . . . (I'm gettin' all worked up just thinkin' about it), Fugly and his minions hog-tied my ass, then dragged me across the cold tile floor of my bathroom. And it was with a sense of horror that I realized what they were doin': sun was gonna be up in about half an hour or so, and they were placing me right beneath the skylights in my bathroom's ceiling. They ripped down the tinfoil from the skylights, made sure I was tied down right beneath 'em, then scurried from my beloved bedroom—my god­damned sanctuary through all the years of madness and mayhem—and left me, Elvis Aaron Presley, the King of Rock 'n' Roll, to die alone on my dirty bathroom floor. Ginger was knocked out cold—and after a few worthless attempts to wake her by callin' her name, I finally just got myself comfortable (comfortable as you can get when you're hog-tied), and turned to face the skylights as the sun began to poke its head over the dark horizon of night.

I was ready for the end. And it was coming faster than a fart after a plate of fried sausage and cornmeal mush.

IV. Daddy's Bound to Die

Last concert I ever performed was for an audience of one.

Kind of fitting, really. Took me back to the days in Tupelo, when I sang simply for the love of music. When I'd pick out a few chords on Daddy's old acoustic guitar and sing the traditionals about Ol' Shep or workin' the fields or finding peace in the valley.

I'd always loved "An American Trilogy," and decided that was as good a song as any to end my life with. As I sang the middle verses, I thought about my beloved daughter, and knew—just knew—she'd be okay. She knew that her daddy was a pioneer (maybe she didn't know I'd gotten heavily into vampire huntin', and that I was—in fact—a vampire myself, but that's just semantics). And she also knew that sometimes pioneers get lost along the way. The machete gets dull, the foliage gets too thick, and the trail disappears on you after a while. Such is the life of a pioneer, and if Daddy was one thing, he was a pioneer, baby. Sold more records, made more movies, ate more food, bumped uglies with more chicks, and—above all else—had me more laughs than any sonuvabitch who came before.

I was the first, and I was the last.

The Alpha and the Omega.

Elvis Aaron Presley.

So ... that's why I needed to set the record straight, let you know that I didn't die in the squalid circumstances you'd been led to believe. I died like I lived; a noble death befittin' a king. I died fightin' the vampire nation, and left the world a little bit better off because of my time here.

The sun is starting to spread across the sky, making the clouds look like sponges at a bloody crime scene. My eyes are filling with tears, because I haven't seen the simple beauty of a sunrise in years, and this is going to be my last.

My skin is starting to smoke and mottle. I manage to wriggle just a little bit out from beneath the direct path of the sunlight, but I can't get too far, and the UV damage has already been done. At least I won't completely inciner­ate, though. Thank God for the little things, right?

I reach for my shades, but they're too far away and my hands are tied too tight. Fuck it. I'm gonna meet this sucker head-on, lookin' death right in the eye until the very end.

I think about 'Cilia.

Think about Lisa Marie.

Smile sadly. Proud and happy and low all at once. Fully alive, baby. Fully alive.

I resume singing "An American Trilogy" with every­thing my meltin' vocal cords have to give (the acoustics in this bathroom suck, but hell: you take what you're given).

I can hear a chorus of angels pretty as the Jordanaires singing backup, and as the sunlight finally turns me into a rotten-lookin hunk of meat, I smile, open my arms to the glories that await me (again, as much as a hog-tied sonuvabitch can open his arms), content that I've lived a life worth livin'.

Alas, it happens to us all.

The King is dead, baby. All hail the King.

Elvis has left the building.