All stories, good or bad, begin at the right time and place.
The night Rosalie Wood's boyfriend of one year proposed to her during an Elvis Presley concert in 1956, she went from thinking she knew everything, to knowing nothing. Faced with Wendell'...
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* chapter music * - Moody Blue - Elvis Presley
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Rosalie POV
Snickering of boys could be heard as we closed in on the living room.
«Have you ever wondered... If those TVs one day talked to each other and decided to team up against you?» A male voice energetically asked, singled out in a room of many—a voice that could only have come from the acoustics of a wide tall man of big lunge capacity.
«Shut your face, Lamar.» Sharp and round, his vocal cords flowed like it was locked and loaded before anyone could count to one. Elvis needed no contemplating as he tiredly spat his chosen response—giving the nameless man an identity while I still only saw the back of Scotty's surf wave.
«Get your face out of my view.» Lamar fired back, chuckling. So this was The Lamar Elvis had told me about, I thought to myself as I entered the room with an unclear path of grey wanting to soar the ceiling. But even for how much the presence of new faces drew me in, nothing had me like trailing that colour of grey back to its home.
The smoke came from the TV.
Not entirely understanding what was going on or what I was looking at—the distinctive scent accompanying the view could be tasted so vividly on my tongue that I thought I'd taken a bite out of that cracked screen myself. A cracked screen. A hole in the TV. Smoke. Bits of my thoughts repeated themselves, but I still did not grasp it wasn't a spoof my mind played on me.
Holding a whole group of people, both standing and sitting, the living room's mood seemed nonchalant, with the exception of Elvis and Lamar. Between Elvis's dad Vernon, The Colonel, Red, and Scotty, no one but me batted an eye over the sight of that TV. Detached from reality, I felt as though I'd gone into the world of the Mad Hatter's tea party—where the path from the kitchen to the living room had been the underground tunnel following Scotty the Rabbit. Out of place, everyone knew of a land I didn't. The land of smoky TVs and the Colonel's hat—that made him perfect for the role of the Mad Hatter. Frankly, he didn't even need that hat to acquire that role.
Scotty cleared his throat to announce our arrival, making me lock eyes with Elvis. With a gun in his hands, his frown softened when he saw me. Like clockwork, the realization hit me like it did that TV. Thinking of our shooting adventure in the woods last summer, I knew he could get in a good shot. I just never imagined him indoors while doing it.
«Elvis, can I talk to you? In private.» I requested, bringing a cautionary knife to a gunfight with a thin sharp smile transforming my lips. A slight backward sidestep was taken as the extra push for an invite.
