John Lindqvist - Let The Right One In aka Let Me In

If I hadn't said anything. If I had let her… bleed.

He scrunched the bag into a ball, let go of it, and the bag jumped out of his hand, fell to the floor. He picked it up, threw it into the air, caught it. The shower was turned on in the bathroom.

It's all true. She is… he is…

While he walked toward the bathroom he smoothed out the bag. Eat, drink and be happy. He heard splashing from behind the closed door. The lock showed white. He knocked gently.

"Eli…"

"Yes. Come in…"

"No, it's just… the bag."

"Can't hear what you're saying. Come in."

"No."

"Oskar, I-"

"I'm leaving the bag here for you!"

He laid the bag outside the door and fled to the living room. Took the record out of its sleeve, put it on the playing table, turned the record player on, and moved the needle to the third track, his favorite.

A pretty long intro, and then the singer's soft voice began rolling out of the speakers.

The girl puts flowers in her hair as she wanders through the field. She will be nineteen this year and she smiled to herself as she walks.

Eli came into the living room. She had fastened a towel around her waist. In her hand she had the plastic bag with her clothes. Her face was clean now and her wet hair fell in tendrils over her cheeks, ears. Oskar folded his arms across his chest where he stood next to the record player, nodding to her.

Why are you smiling, the boy asks then when they meet by chance at the gate I'm thinking of the one who will be mine says the girl with eyes so blue The one that I love so.

"Oskar?"

"Yes?" He lowered the volume, inclined his head toward the record player. "Silly, isn't it?"

Eli shook her head. "No, this is great. This I really like."

"You do?"

"Yes. But Oskar…" Eli looked like she was going to say more, but only added an "oh well" and undid the towel knotted around her waist. It fell to the floor at her feet and she stood there naked a few feet away from him. Eli made a sweeping gesture with her hand over her thin body, said: "Just so you know."

… down to the lake, where they draw in the sand they quietly say to each other; You my friend, it is you I want La-lala-lalala…

A short instrumental section and then the song was over. A mild crackling from the speakers, as the needle moved toward the next song, while Oskar looked at Eli.

The small nipples looked almost black against her pale white skin. Her upper body was slender, straight, and without much in the way of contours. Only the ribs stood out clearly in the sharp overhead light. Her thin arms and legs appeared unnaturally long the way they grew out of her body: a young sapling covered with human skin. Between the legs she had… nothing. No slit, no penis. Just a smooth surface.

Oskar pulled his hand through his hair, let it rest cupped against his neck. He didn't want to say that ridiculous mommy-word, but it slipped out anyway.

"But you don't have a… willie."

Eli bent her head, looked down at her groin as if this was a completely new discovery. The next song started and Oskar didn't hear what Eli answered. He pushed back the lever that raised the needle so it lifted from the record.

"What did you say?"

"I said I've had one."

"What happened to it?"

Eli chuckled and Oskar heard himself what the question sounded like, blushing a little. Eli waved her arms to the side and pulled her lower lip over the upper one.

"I left it on the subway."

"Don't be stupid."

Without looking at Eli, Oskar went past her to the bathroom to check that there were no traces.

Warm steam hung in the air; the mirror was misted over. The bathtub was as white as before, just a faint yellow streak of old dirt near the edge that never went away. The sink, clean.

It hasn't happened.

Eli had simply gone into the bathroom for appearance's sake, dropped the illusion. But, no: the soap. He lifted it up. The soap was faintly

streaked with pink and in the little porcelain indentation under it, in the water that collected there, there was a lump of something that looked like a tadpole, yes: alive, and he flinched when it started to-

to swim

– to move, wag its tail and wriggle its way to the outlet of the indentation, ran down into the sink, getting stuck on the edge. But it didn't move there, was not alive. He ran water out of the tap and splashed some on it so it was flushed down the drain. He also rinsed off the soap and washed out the indentation. Then he took his bathrobe from the hook, went back into the living room, and held it out to Eli, who was still standing naked on the floor, looking around.

"Thanks. When will your mother be back?"

"In a couple of hours." Oskar held up the bag with her clothes. "Should I throw these away?"

Eli pulled on the bathrobe, tied the belt around the middle.

"No. I'll get it later." She nudged Oskar's shoulder. "Oskar? You understand now that I'm not a girl. That I'm not…"

Oskar stepped away from her.

"You're like a goddamn broken record. I got it. You told me already."

"But I haven't."

"Of course you have."

"When?"

Oskar thought it over.

"I can't remember, but I knew about it at least. Have known it for a while."

"Are you… disappointed?"

"Why would I be?"

"Because… I don't know. Because you think it's… complicated. Your friends-"

"Cut it out! Cut it out! You're sick. Just lay off."

"OK."

Eli fiddled with the belt of the bathrobe, then walked over to the record player and looked at the turning record. Turned around, looked around the room.

"You know, it's been a long time since I was… just hanging out in someone's home like this. I don't really know… What should I do?"

"I don't know."

Eli let her shoulders fall, pushed her hands into the pockets of the bathrobe, and watched the record's dark hole in the middle as if she were hypnotized. Opened her mouth as if to say something, closed it again. Took her right hand out of the pocket, stretched it out toward the record, and pushed her finger on it so it came to a stop.

"Watch it. It can get… damaged." Sorry.

Eli quickly pulled his hand back and the record sped up, kept turning. Oskar saw that his finger had left a damp imprint behind that could be seen every time the record spun through the strip of light from the overhead lamp. Eli put his hand back in the pocket, watching the record as if he were trying to listen to the music by studying the tracks.

"This sounds a bit… but…" the corners of Eli's mouth twitched, "… I haven't had a… normal friendship with anyone in two hundred years."

He looked at Oskar with a sorry-I'm-saying-such-silly-things smile. Oskar widened his eyes.

"Are you really that old?"

"Yes. No. I was born about two hundred and twenty years ago, but half the time I've slept."

"That's normal, I do that too. Or at least… eight hours… what does that make… one third of the time."

"Yes. But… when I say sleep I mean that there are months at a time when I don't… get up at all. And then a few months when I… live. But then I rest during the daytime."

"Is that how it works?"

"I don't know. That's how it is with me at any rate. And then when I wake up I'm… little again. And weak. That's when I need help. That's maybe why I've been able to survive. Because I'm small. And people want to help me. But… for very different reasons."

A shadow crossed Eli's cheek as he clenched his teeth, pushed his hands down into the pockets of the robe, found something, drew it up. A shiny, thin strip of paper. Something Oskar's mom had left there; she sometimes used Oskar's bathrobe. Eli gently laid the strip of paper back in the pocket as if it was something valuable.