Blood Lite

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 go

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 go

Real scared.

But even bein' afraid, I wasn't go

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 go

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 stu

"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 fu

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.