Necrophenia

‘Elvis is a friend of mine,’ I said.

‘Elvis is a friend to all Mankind,’ said the black lady. And she crossed herself above her ample bosoms. ‘The Pope says Masser Elvis is the Blessed Second Come.’

‘The Pope says what?’ I asked, in some surprise.

‘That Masser Elvis is Messiah Elvis. Praise the Lord and pass the phase-plasma rifles in a forty-watt range. Lordy Lordy.’

‘Right,’ I said. As I was wont to do on such occasions. ‘And when exactly did the Pope say this?’

‘About half an hour ago. He teleported in from the Vatican to take lunch with Masser Elvis. That’s what I’m cookin’ up here.’

‘Hm,’ I went. ‘This is all most unexpected.’

‘Maybe for you, Mr Widebum, but not for the rest of the world.’

‘I think the rest of the world may take my side on this issue,’ I said.

‘You think?’ And the black lady diddled with some futuristic-looking contrivance that was strapped about her wrist. And the wafer-thin (mint-coloured) plasma TV lit up like the Fourth of July. Or the fifth of November, back home.

‘I am standing here, outside the gates of Graceland,’ said a TV news reporter. And there he was, doing that very thing. ‘Where myself and news teams from all around the world and thousands of followers of Elvis are gathered.’ And the TV camera pa

And I looked at the black lady.

And the black lady looked at me.

And I said, ‘No, this isn’t right.’

And then she hit me with the frying pan.

And I found myself falling down and down into the whirling black pit of oblivion that nineteen-fifties American genre detectives always fall into at this time.

Which was definitely not supposed to happen.

50

And then I awoke to find Elvis looking down at me.

And he was dabbing at my brow and singing.

And he was singing ‘The Smell in the Gents”. And I wrote that. But he sang it very nicely. And Elvis smiled and said, ‘Are you all right, buddy? You took a bit of a tumble.’

And I lifted up my head a tad and felt the lump on the back of it. ‘Your cook welted me with a frying pan,’ I said. ‘And although that looks very fu

And Elvis said, ‘Lo, you are healed.’

And I said, ‘What?’

And the Pope who was standing nearby said, ‘It is a miracle.’ And added, ‘Lordy Lordy.’

‘It is a what?’ I said. ‘No, it’s not!’

‘Elvis has raised him from the dead,’ said the Pope, ‘as he formerly did Lazarus.’

‘He never did,’ I protested. ‘I was just unconscious.’

‘You were dead,’ said the Pope. ‘I saw you at it. You weren’t breathing.’

‘I was too breathing. I was.’

‘Delirious and no surprise,’ said the Pope. ‘This is the final proof I needed to confirm your divinity, O Holy One.’ And he fell to one knee and touched the hem of Elvis’s jumpsuit bell-bottom garment ending.

‘Hold on there,’ I complained. ‘This is all some mistake. All of it. And a very big mistake, too.’

‘How did you get here, sir?’ asked Elvis.

‘I teleported,’ I said, ‘from the same booth-thingie that you did. From the corner near Fangio’s Bar.’

‘Never heard of such a place,’ said Elvis. ‘It sounds like some den of vice, where shameless women and wanton men meet to engage in acts of filthy congregation.’

‘It’s not quite as much fun as that,’ I said. ‘But it’s my bar now, so I might think about giving that a go.’

‘Antichrist,’ cried the Pope, and he whipped out a cross from his papal robes and waggled it at me with menace. And I stared into the face of that Pope and then I saw who he was.

For it was indeed Keith, though Pope Keith he called himself.

Keith, the brother of Elvis.

‘Oh my God!’ I shouted at Elvis. ‘It’s him!’

‘The Pope,’ said Elvis. ‘Show some respect, sir, please.’

‘It’s him,’ I said. ‘And I’m me. Elvis, don’t you know me?’

‘I don’t think we’ve made acquaintance, sir. My name is Elvis Presley and-’

‘It’s me, Elvis – Lazlo Woodbine.’

‘Lazlo Wormwood more like,’ said the Pope. ‘The Evil One himself. ’

‘I’m not the Evil One,’ I shouted, rising as I did so to shake a fist or two. ‘You are the Evil One. The Homunculus. The Evil Twin of Elvis.’

‘Twin?’ said the Pope.

‘Well, brother then. I know who you are.’

‘An auto-da-fé,’ said the Pope. ‘The public burning of a heretic. That would begin your Earthly reign with a big media event, O Holy One.’

Elvis nodded. ‘It would,’ he agreed.

And as he nodded I smelled him.

I didn’t mean to smell him. I wasn’t doing furtive sniffings, not like I had done earlier that morning. I just sort of smelled him because his smell came wafting all over me. It positively engulfed and took to drowning me. And Elvis no longer smelled of all those nice things.

Elvis smelled of sulphur.

Elvis smelled of brimstone.

‘It’s you,’ I said. ‘You lied to me. You tricked me somehow, I don’t know how. But it’s you. You are the Homunculus.’

‘I think you’ve been drinking, fella,’ said Elvis, and he took me by the trench-coat lapels. And I tried to struggle, as well I might, but Elvis did know karate and he flung me rather hard, right across the room, and I bounced off a rather hard wall at the end.

‘Handcuff him,’ I heard Elvis say to someone, ‘and we’ll get him ready for that burning automobile thing.’

‘Auto-da-fé,’ said Pope Keith.

‘That,’ said Elvis. ‘Yeah.’

And big hands were laid upon me fiercely. And someone else welted me hard.

And I awoke once more from that whirling black pit of oblivion.

To find to my surprise and, I ca

And Pope Keith ceased his intonations and called for someone to tape up my mouth. And this that someone did.

Which considerably increased my panic and caused me to come near to all but peeing myself. Which I might well have done had not a sudden and quite ludicrous thought entered my head: that I should save my pee until the Pope lit the combustibles, in the hope that I could pee out the flames. It’s fu

‘The dawn of a New Age,’ I could hear the TV news reporter saying, over the Pope’s resumed Latin stuff. ‘The Final Age. The Glorious End Times. When the Second Come will defeat the powers of Evil and lead us all – well, we Christians at least – to Paradise.’

‘Mmph mm mmm,’ I went. Which meant something along the lines that a big mistake was being made here. And please would someone kindly untie me as I dearly needed the toilet.

And then Pope Keith chimed in with, ‘Burn the heretic. Burn the Antichrist.’ And wouldn’t you just know it, this cry was taken up by the assembled multitude and chanted again and again and again.

Which rather drowned out my mumbling of, ‘Mmph mm mmm.’

And the chanting sort of turned down a bit in volume, as it might do in a movie when someone has something to say over it, and I heard the TV news reporter say, ‘And the wi