The Death of a King

How the king of rock n' roll really died

It was a rainy day in the city of lights. Well, it had been raining. The meager precipitation had ceased only moments before, but there was a still a large collection of very somber looking rain clouds hovering above the city. The time of year was early September, and the weather was slightly cool so early in the morning. The cars passing by hummed out the all too familiar sound of wet rubber on pavement. A young boy was bouncing a soccer ball deftly off his forehead, managing to keep the ball in the air and stay out of everyone’s way all at the same time.

A man stepped out of a nearby hotel just after nine o’clock in the morning. He was wearing a denim jacket that was a different shade of blue than the jeans he was wearing. A pair of old, battered cowboy boots clunked on the sidewalk as he ambled in the direction of the boy with the soccer ball. His gait was slow and purposeful; not a single footfall landed where he didn’t want it to. To the casual observer, the man would have appeared as nothing more than another tourist out for a walkabout in one of the most famous cities in the world. To a more practiced eye, he would have appeared as so much more.

When the man was no more than ten feet from the boy, the soccer ball took an odd bounce off the bridge of the boy’s nose and sailed in the direction of the approaching man of mystery. The toe of his right boot lifted up slightly off the ground to stop the escaping ball in its tracks. The man bent down, his long dark hair cascading into his face, and picked up the ball. It was wet from its brief jaunt on the ground, but the man seemed not to notice. He spun the ball slowly in his hands before holding it out to the young boy who had been chasing his toy.

“Désolé, monsieur,” the boy mumbled. He held out his hands for the man to hand him back his ball.

The man drew it back. “Don’t speak to me in that gibberish, kid.” He spoke in a perfect impression of Elvis Presley, because he was, in fact, Elvis Presley. The boy, being far too young to know who Elvis Presley was, just gave the King a quizzical look. Presley clucked his tongue, and held out the ball to the boy. He could have used a bit of power on the boy to make him understand, but he didn’t see the use in trying.

“Merci,” the boy called out. He snatched the soccer ball from Presley’s hands and bolted down the street toward a nearby café. Elvis watched the boy disappear into the distance, and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. He popped a single smoke from the box with a flick of his wrist, and clamped it gently between his lips. Once the pack was back in his pocket, Elvis snapped his fingers and a small flame sprung to life at their tips. He lit the cigarette and took a long drag, exhaling the smoke into the cool, damp morning air.

A few things must be said about the great Elvis Presley. First, he is one of the greatest, most loved recording artists of all time. Second, he is one of the most notorious wizards that has ever lived. Much of his music was enjoyed so thoroughly because it was imbued with his own power to make it listenable. His career was so successful because his magic was so excellent. Not to say that is was bad, it just wasn’t quite as good as most people think it is. Elvis is also the closest thing to an immortal the world has ever seen. He’s been alive since the early thirteenth century, and has lived under so many different names he can hardly remember them all. What’s more, his entire life has been spent on the run.

Something must also be said about wizards. They are illegal, though the majority of the population is unaware of their existence. Wizards have lived in secrecy their entire existence and are hunted by an equally secret society of men who hate wizards to the very core of their being. Many, many wizards have been slain by the society, and Elvis is the last of their kind. He’s kept himself constantly on the move which has kept him from being exterminated, even though there were some close calls.

One might wonder why Elvis chose a life in the spotlight if he was being hunted. Well the answer to that is simple. He thought he was safe. Word of the society’s downfall had reached him at some point in the 1950’s. He decided to use his powers for a little gain, and entered the music industry under a new identity. It was only years after his decision to become a musician that he learned that it was simply a lie to draw him out. Elvis faked his death immediately and went back into hiding and a life of exile.

So there he was, a wanderer in the heart of Paris, smoking a cigarette and sensing the world around him. There was a certain spell that Presley, or any wizard, could cast that could enhance the caster’s senses to a point where they were superhuman. It was easy to pick up any unwanted company when you could hear a fly buzzing from four hundred yards. He closed his eyes and let his consciousness scour his surroundings. A moment later, Elvis determined he was safe to make his way across town.

Elvis had just arrived in Paris the previous day and he had some sightseeing he wanted to get done. Even though he had been alive for several centuries, Presley had never set foot in Paris. He couldn’t say why, he just never had a reason to go there so he never did. He had decided it was high time he see the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame, maybe even that art museum everyone seems so taken with.

Elvis set off down the street toward the Seine. He didn’t exactly know where he was going just yet, or how to get there, but he liked walking. It helped clear his head. He made a right, a left, two more rights, and then another left. He had twisted and turned so much he could hardly tell where he was. There was the sound of a boat horn not too far to the north, so he knew he was close to the river. Elvis turned down a nearby alley and walked in the direction of the horn.

The alley was deserted except for him, but Elvis didn’t mind. Other people just gummed up the works anyway. Halfway down the alley, a very strange looking metal sphere dropped from the sky and landed mere inches in front of Presley. He’d never seen such an object before. Symbols were carved into the metal surface crudely, and while he didn’t recognize all of them, he knew enough to know that whatever the thing was, it was trouble. Elvis turned on his heels to retreat only to find a row of men in dark, flowing coats standing across the alley behind him. He couldn’t see them, but Elvis knew full well that there were dangerous weapons hidden under those coats.

The King spun around again, but found another line of nearly identical men blocking the only other way out. He dug deep down inside of him to tap his power, but he found that there was nothing there.

“Ah, ah, ah,” a voice from an unseen body called out. “You’ll find that your power is null and void at the moment.”

Elvis wheeled around to see a slight man wearing a stark white suit standing nonchalantly in front of one of the rows of angry looking fellows. The man’s hair was slicked back with product, and a pencil thing mustache trailed across his upper lip. He smiled snidely at Presley, revealing a mouth full of yellowed teeth. Elvis recognized the man as Herman Prescott, head of the society that was doing their best to kill him, and wipe the race of wizards off the face of the planet for good.

Prescott walked to where the metal sphere sat on the pavement and placed his pristine leather dress shoe on top of it.

“Impressive, is it not?” Prescott asked the King. “We have found an old negation recipe in one of our tomes. Carve a few symbols in just the right way on just the right object and it happens to suck all magical energy out of a two hundred yard radius.”

“Nifty toy,” Elvis replied curtly. He knew Prescott wasn’t lying by the fact that he couldn’t have created even the smallest of flames at the moment. He was in a very real, very large amount of trouble, and he had no idea how he could get out of it.

Prescott merely smiled. “You see, Elvis �" or whatever you’re going by nowadays �" I have worked a very long time to see the wizard race squashed out of existence. My father did the same, as well as his father before him. You are a blight on humanity, and must be exterminated.”

“So what are you waiting for?” Elvis spat. He was exerting an immense amount of effort to call even the tiniest amount of power to his aid, but nothing was responding.

“Ah, forgive me,” Prescott apologized. “As you are the last wizard on earth, and you’re about to die most gruesomely, I thought I’d take some time to savor it. After all, I will forever be known as the man who made wizards extinct.”

Elvis grunted a laugh. He’d given up. He was just waiting for the final blow. “Yeah, well, forgive me if I don’t want to hear you pontificate before you blow my a*s to hell. Have your goons pull their triggers and get it over with.”

Prescott looked a bit crestfallen, but shook it off. “Very well. Boys.”

Every man in the alley other than Prescott and Elvis drew a very strange looking weapon that appeared to be a mix between a crossbow and a flamethrower and trained their sights on the very last wizard on earth. Prescott took a moment to remove himself from the line of fire before issuing the very last command of his long career with the society. “Fire.”

Without hesitation Prescott’s men pulled their triggers, and the alleyway was lit with the light of bright blue liquid fire. One man would have been able to do the job, but Prescott wanted to be sure that Presley was dead. He looked on triumphantly as the man he had chased for so long slowly melted to bone and then to ash.

And so it was, some fifty years after Elvis was pronounced dead, the King of Rock-and-Roll died in a Parisian alley, and the wizard race went extinct with him.