LTROI-Film

Oskar looked around for Eli, but didn’t see her anywhere. So he wandered down to a little play area beyond the next apartment building. It was around 9:30 and the August air had dropped down into the 60’s, but he wore no jacket. He picked out a swing that was about the right height for him, sat down, and began to swing.

Eli lay in the darkness, drawing Oskar’s blood from his right subclavian vein. She had been surprised to find herself suddenly awake and being bitten, but she had known immediately that it was him, and what he was doing was neither painful nor unwelcome. Without thinking, she had reciprocated; had followed an impulse, driven purely by emotion, to love him in return. What they were now doing was a new experience: in more than two hundred years, she had never done it before.

"Double, Double, Toil and Trouble
I'm the one who'll burst your bubble!
If you stutter for succor, rest assure
That in the gutter is where men flutter
I'm the foil that can be wrapped in coils;
In which I spoil.

I can shape and shift,
Howl and hiss.
Most of all,
I'll make sure you're missed;
As I carry you into the abyss."

--The vampire lord

Wednesday, November 25th

“Eli, look.” Oskar held open Christensen’s wallet and showed it to Eli. “He was a Canadian from Vancouver, British Columbia. And I think he had a daughter.”

Eli looked at the picture, scuffed and worn from years spent pressed in a wallet, and saw a smiling, brown-haired girl of about fourteen with braces.

Oskar lowered the wallet into his lap and stared at the corpse. “We picked someone’s dad.”

24 JULY 1983

John Christensen stretched and began to put away his pastels. It was becoming too dark and windy to do any more work on his picture, and he was getting hungry, so it was time to call it quits.

19 JULY 1983

“Oww, Eli! It hurts! It hurts! It—it . . . oh—look at that.”

Eli and Oskar lay side by side on Oskar’s mattress. Oskar was holding his hand up in front of him, watching as it transformed itself before their eyes into a claw.

“I know it hurts! But don’t worry, Oskar—it won’t feel like that forever! The more you do it, the less pain you’ll feel.”

“It felt like I had my hand in a light socket or something,” Oskar replied as the tingling dissipated down his arm. His mouth gaped and he stared, wide-eyed, at his transformed hand.

5 JULY 1983

“Just try again.”

“It’s not working. This is stupid.”

“Just picture it in your mind, and it’ll happen.”

Oskar sighed. “Eli, we’ve been at this for half an hour. I’m no good at this. I can’t.”

“You don’t know what you can do and what you can’t.”

“Okay. I’ll try again.”

Oskar closed his eyes, leaned back on the couch, and tried to concentrate.

. . . My teeth are fangs. Sharp, pointy teeth. Fangs, fangs, fangs . . .

He groaned in frustration. “I don’t get it!”

A sharp pounding on the door interrupted them. They stopped and turned their heads toward the noise, both knowing who it was. There was momentary silence. Then another series of knocks, louder this time--insistent. They looked at each other, and Oskar, scared at the hint of anger returning to her eyes, whispered, “let me talk to him.”

Disclaimer:
The following is adapted from the novel Let the Right One In by John A. Linqvist and the film bearing the same name. The characters in this work are those of Mr. Linqvist and no copyright protection is asserted to this work.