"Death reveals to man what he truly is"
The intro to that one song by the Berzerker
“Bullshit.” Thought Abe Lincoln sullenly.
The real problem with death is when it reveals to everyone else what you really are. Especially when that something happens to be an immortal vampire overlord.
Oh sure they covered it all up. Put out a story about how he'd been assassinated, how he was a great president. How he'd never eaten a live baby on the white house roof.
Lies! All of it. Nothing but Illuminati bullshit propagated by those CIA bastards.
So now people remembered him as some benevolent martyr to freedom, rather than a bloodthirsty tyrant. Outcast, forgotten. Skulking in the shadows, scavenging from the dregs of society to survive.
It made no difference. There was one simple fact that no rewriting of history or mass brainwashing exercise could ever change.
Being shot in the head REALLY, REALLY FUCKING HURTS.
Perhaps, Lincoln thinks to himself sometimes, he could have sweet talked his way out of having slaughtered half the theatre audience in a blind fury. What the powers that be really took offense to was all the swearing that accompanied it. Bunch of tightasses.
He scratched idly at the smoking hole that had once been his right eye. Never fucking healed. That bastard had known what he was doing. Must have had something holy in the bullet.
Never did get a chance to find out what. When the whole world thinks you're dead, except the people that want you dead some things get forgotten in the heat of the moment.
Damn thing had been knocked out by a CIA vampire hunter with a baseball bat and a bad attitude. Couldn't say he missed it, the damn thing had burned like crazy.
Still without the constant burning of the bullet he'd at least been able to think straight. Stopped being a raving tornado of death and laid low. 140 years on the run, and for the past 3 he hadn't needed to surf the waves of battle out of town before the reinforcements turned up. Not that skulking in a dilapidated crypt in a dead end backwater town in the middle of butt-fucking nowhere was really where he pictured himself being by now. In fact it was about as far from the opulent luxury and baby raping parties he’d assumed were his right as it was possible to get without actually living in a sewer.
He wondered what he must look like by now. No point looking in a mirror after all. Words such as drawn, haggard, ragged, hobo and shite crossed his mind. Still, that's the problem with feeding of junkies. They might taste like shit, but somehow nothing else seems to quite... satisfy.
Still, with the hunters off his trail, perhaps he could find some time to clean himself up. Get out of this stinking shithole of a town, sort out his diet, and regain his strength. Maybe get out to one of those Amish places. No drugs there, and it's not like they could phone for help.
Lincoln chuckled to himself, a guttural, mirthless sound. Suddenly he span to face the entrance of the crypt, hissing. Someone else was here!
A black clad figure stepped from the shadows of the doorway. Moonlight spilled in behind him, illuminating the squalid filth in which Lincoln had been living all this time. Discarded needles mingled with discarded bones in stinking filth.
The stranger himself was illuminated. Black leather jacket and trousers, black T shirt emblazoned with the logo "Who Killed Marilyn?” He was wearing fingerless gloves decorated with a bone pattern, and his long black hair was slicked into a point, hanging down over his face.
“Oh great,” thought Lincoln. “It's a fucking goth.” He’d seen one’s dressed like this hanging around recently. One group of sad pretenders worshipping yet further pretenders to throne long since broken. The tributes He’d demanded in his day were of blood and fear. He’d walked his own grim path and none could follow, even had they so desired.
Another age, another life. Honestly, the youth of today. Still, he was hungry, and it seemed fate had ordered the metaphorical pizza.
Lincoln straightened up, confidant now. This was no threat.
“What do you want, little meat thing?” He spat contemptuously at the stranger.
“Well sir, I'm just taking care of business”
“What?”
Had he a working circulatory system or a body temperature above that of his surroundings, Lincoln’s blood would have chilled at that voice. He knew that voice.
“It can't be. You're dead.”
“Actually, you're dead. I'm just lying low for while. Mr. President.”
“Don't mock me Presley.”
“I'm not here to mock you Mr. President.”
Something glinted in the moonlight as Presley drew it from his jacket. Something sharp. Something pointed.
“I'm here to kill you.”
Instantly Lincoln leapt to attack, claws outstretched, fangs dripping. His sole remaining eye burning with hate. Centuries of experience in the art of the kill transforming his body into a lightning fast missile of concentrated death.
Or at least that was the idea. All those centuries of vampiric night stalking didn’t appear to have quite prepared him for the lightning fast roundhouse kick to the head which Presley delivered, with perfect timing.
Lincolns withered body slammed into the decrepit brickwork, sending up a cloud of dust and filth.
“Don't fuck with me Mr. President. I'm a goddamn black belt in ass kicking.”
Lincoln climbed unsteadily to his feet.
“Fool. You can beat my body, but you can't break it. Don't you understand I am immortal! Batter upon me until your fists bleed, eventually you, mortal will tire. And then I will destroy you! No weapon can harm me!!”
“Yu-huh” deadpanned Elvis as he slammed the three foot metal stake through Lincoln’s ribcage, straight into his dead black heart.
Lincoln screamed. The pain was incredible. Like nothing he'd ever felt. Nothing since... Since...
Shit. Since he'd been shot in the head with a bullet carved from the pope’s old hipbones or whatever it was. A holy bullet.
Shit.
Shit shit fuck fucking shit.
Lincoln screamed. And screamed, and writhed. But that was all he could do. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t pull the accursed object from his chest and shove it up Presley’s ass like he so badly wanted to.
“Wha.. What? Where?....”
Looking down he saw the spike protruding from his chest, pinning him to the wall. Around the wound his pale, pallid flesh began to blacken and flake. Consumed by an invisible fire. Radiating outward from the golden stake.
“Where'd I get hold of a holy weapon? One powerful enough to put down an ancient night crawler like you?”
“Well it weren't easy by any means. But they haven't found all the secret passages and I do like to slip back home from time to time. And as much as I hated melting 'em down, those records weren't really doing much just sitting on the wall like that. Hell, the fake ones look just as good. It's not like anyone will ever know. Except you and me.”
“Wh.. why?...”
“Well, me anyway. So long Mr. President.”
As the burning finally overcame his ability to scream, the last thing Abraham Lincoln Vampire Lord of America was Elvis quietly singing to himself as he slowly walked away
"Five twenty five, august fifth, nineteen sixty two....."
