Blood Lite

by Kevin J. Anderson

  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 Presid
ent 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).