A One-off Vignette (Maybe?)

[dongregg]

Eli stirs as he wakes. He reaches over to lay his arm across Oskar's body, but he finds an empty space on the pallet where Oskar should be. He doesn’t have to listen or peer into the darkness. With his sharpened senses, he knows the abandoned house and basement room they’ve camped in for the last few months is empty. Oskar is gone.

But when could he have gone? Oskar’s side of the pallet is at room temperature. If he had gone out just now, immediately after waking, his impression on the pallet would still be cool to the touch. “Then he must have waited for me to fall asleep,” Eli thinks. “He must have known he could get to a safe place before the sun broke the plane of the horizon. He had to have planned it to be this way.”

That realization causes Eli’s feelings of resentment to surface. He lets the feelings take charge of his thoughts, rehearsing the little things that had irritated him during the past few months. Several times Oskar had declined Eli's invitation to go out and have fun, like spying on people from the shadows or running and shrieking through the woods. Soon, though, Eli comes to admit that both of them had begun to get on each other’s nerves a lot. He had argued when Oskar said he wanted to start hunting alone, although at one time Eli would have applauded that as a sign of strength. And Oskar was unhappy when Eli told him he didn't feel like being read to. Neither seemed to want to play the games or work the puzzles that the other wanted to.

Eli gets up from the pallet and climbs the stairs to the main part of the big, empty house. The glow of twilight illuminates the large front room. He sits on the floor, draws his knees up to his chest, and hugs them. “He didn’t say goodbye. He knew he was leaving and he didn’t say goodbye.” A wave of grief sweeps over him and drives out his feelings of resentment. This is grief fed by a sense of loss that had grown but that had remained unacknowledged as he and Oskar had slowly drawn apart.

Eli's throat tightens and he begins to cry, softly at first and then hard. Sobs wrack his skinny body for long minutes. He tries to gather his feelings in, but the thought returns – “He didn’t tell me goodbye.” The tears start again. Now a choked wail competes with the sobs.

When Eli is all cried out and his breathing has become normal, he sits cross-legged with his chin sunk onto his chest. There will be time to second guess and to wonder how it could have been different. But for now Eli is left with a single thought --

“He’s gone. My Oskar is gone.”

[gkmoberg1]

Oh, tug at the heartstrings! Eli without Oskar? Oskar without Eli? Surely the little one is mistaken. Yes? (btw, great little story. can't stop here, could you?, would you? no.....)

[EEA]

Pretty sad, though a realistic outcome for both of them.

[dongregg]

Oh, tug at the heartstrings! Eli without Oskar? Oskar without Eli? Surely the little one is mistaken. Yes? (btw, great little story. can't stop here, could you?, would you? no.....)

Well, you see, GK, it's your fault. Per your really good advice to listen gently to my muse, I have listened for the seeds of a happy story, the kind I love to read and want to write. Alas, while trying to pick up on some romping-around-Europe, playing-slap-and-tickle story ideas, with the children joyously recovering their light-hearted feelings from their interrupted childhood -- while doing all of that, I say, night fears and insecurity kept pushing the gentler whisperings of my muse aside. I finally gave in (with an audible sigh) and wrote this vignette. My idea was just to get it out of the way so I could hear the happier story ideas. That would be the plan, see? But now you have raised the question as to whether the story might go on, leaving room, for example, for a chastened and repentant Oskar to show back up. To quote you quoting Eli, "Don't think so." It would be a lot of wasted melodrama, wouldn't it? And right now, I'm not ready to forgive Oskar for going off like that and breaking Eli's heart.

So I think it served my muse's purpose to just put it out there so I can move on. The problem with that whole roll of the dice is that I'm not in charge of what will bubble up next. But I'm hoping for Oskar plus Eli plus

[dongregg]

Pretty sad, though a realistic outcome for both of them.

Thanks, EEA. Yeah, pretty plausible, but too too sad.

[Drakeule]

I liked it. I had thoughts for a ff myself that would have started this way. If i had any writing skills at all.

[Jameron]

That was really nice, my kind of story

I'm glad you've acknowledged that you can't leave it there, you know you can't. You know that thoughts and ideas of how to continue will nag away at you until you put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, until there is a little more, and then a little bit more, and then lots more. We, your grateful audience, will lap it up and cry for more at every chapter's end.

.

[gkmoberg1]

I find this story rather plausible. Were Eli & Oskar's young friendship to fall apart, it would likely be done so by Oskar. Why do I say that? Because I think the friendship is far more dear to Eli. Eli has come through centuries of loneliness. We get hardly any background information in the movie regarding Eli's past, but in the novel we learn this has been Eli's only real friendship across 200+ years. Thus, a loneliness that almost nobody but Eli could understand. So, I do not think Eli would likely let it go at all easily. And so I end up finding Eli's reaction here to be genuine. Oskar, on the other hand, is 12. And he has none of the longevity that Eli has endured. Oskar cannot yet understand how Eli sees the near uniqueness of the friendship they've found. As well, Oskar has not had a lot of experience building and keeping friendships - he's had a fairly quiet life. So again, Oskar is the weak point. And so again, I agree with Eli's reaction and even Oskar's apparent departure. It's a foolishness of Oskar's youth and inexperience of his new life & situation.

[Drakeule]

I thought the same as well. Oskar growing to resent Eli for forcing him to leave his family behind. Maybe even comparing Eli to the vampire that made him.

[gkmoberg1]

Possible! Despite what has happened between his father and him and his mother and him, Oskar may well miss them very much after some time.

Perhaps we can convince dongregg to give us a second part, but have it be from Oskar's point of view