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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 ru
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 cha
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.