Elvissey Read Online Free Page A

John," I said. "Talk."
    "Sleepaway, Iz," he repeated. "Places to go, people to be.
Sleepaway."
    Rolling off I eyed our ceiling's slate, an unreadable
heaven too close to comfort. We lay separate but equal,
together yet apart, one and divided; I wished he was with me,
fearing he'd never be again. The living room's TVC came on
by itself; it needed rechipping but a workperson essentialled
for that and so we let it play as it wished. From the words I
gathered that a speaker representing one sect of the C of
E-that is to say, the Church of Elvis-was preaching; the
congregants called out for their imagined savior, crying for
him to step from his world into ours.
    "E," they chanted, intruding themselves throughout our
space. "Save us, E.-
    As I lay there I listened to wind scratching the window;
then I heard the wind drop to the carpet and land on a shoe.
Pressing on the light I soaked our room until all appeared
freefloating within an amber sea. A mouse sought succor
beneath my dressing-table.
    "John," I said, shifting him with no greater ease than if I'd
tried pushing a mountain. "The room's wildlifed. Heard
and seen, present and accounted."
    "Wildlifed," he replayed. "Two feet or four?"
    "We're verminized," I said. "A mouse, undertabled. Go,
do, please-"
    "Untouchable, Iz," he said. "It's life."
    "It'll breed and bedcrawl," I said. "Cruise it and bruise it,
John. I beg."
    The mouse's head appeared, resembling a shoetip; it
froze, seeming fixed by my stare. I didn't move; it did, racing
crossroom, vanishing under our bed. Awakened full I
bounded high, tumbling John floorways.

    "Godness, Iz-" His insomnia disrupted, John rose with
clear, if troubled, mind.
    "Ex it, John," I said. "It'll warm itself with us."
    He stared bedways, considering my question even as I
asked it. "Impossibled, Iz. Even with peewees. Can't
think-"
    "A mouse!" I shouted, balancing myself upon our mattress, alerted to sounds of scratch. "Try, John. Show it what
for."
    My husband stamped his good foot, rocking the room.
Our intruder darted out, shooting into the quarter-meter's
width between dresser and console. Kneeling, grasping one
of my boots, I tossed it, jamming the heel into the mouse's
only exit. Isolate now, it attempted to scramble up the surrounding smoothness, seeking grip, finding none, sliding
floorways again and again, outsplaying tiny feet no larger
than earrings.
    "Send it up the flagpole and fly it, John," I screamed.
"John, please, I beg, I don't want to have to-"
    "Can't think. Can't. No-" he began to say; leaning forward, his sentence pending, clutching himself stomachways,
he balled inward as if to keep his innards from gnawing
themselves free. A medication side-effect was tenfolded gastric output at mere notion of violent response; if the notion
prolonged, even sans action, he'd be eaten away so physically from within as I had been emotionally.
    "Living must live," he said, replaying his new-learned
lessons. "Live with purpose. Must live. Must-"
    'John" I cried, aware of what necessaried, were we to
know peace. Something in the mouse kept it living against
every odd; I'd hoped it would keel, but it didn't. John's white
face drew deathshade as his blood streamed inward, seeking
release.
    "Iz," he said, sinking his teeth lipways, reddening them, "I
can't. Can't, can't, can't-"
    "I'll settle," I said, climbing down, smoothing his damp hair. He attempted to go blank, eyeshutting, surely constructing in mindeye images of sunshine and meadows and
all else neverseen, that he could recover enough to lie at rest
without hemorrhage. I hated him so for my having to do
what essentialled; pushed deeperdown my own rage with the
ease experience brings. I was never so good at hurting as was
John. "Rest, angel. I'll settle."

    In my bedside drawer were scissors; my choice of weapon
was no less impromptu than any guard's. I trod gentlefooted to where the mouse flung itself against the walls
within which it