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

– come staggering through the corridor with his enormous bag on his back.

His lips trembled under his hand and he clenched his teeth to stop them from chattering. Still in a crouch, he shuffled back from the door, one step at a time. Felt the corner of the room at his back at the same time as the spear of light from the door was darkened.

Santa Claus had stopped between the light and the shelter. Tommy put his other hand over the first to stop himself from screaming, waited for the door to open.

Nowhere to run to.

Through cracks in the door he could see a fragmented outline of Hakan's body. Eli stretched the stake out as far as it went, nudged the door. It swung out about ten centimeters, then the body outside stopped it.

One hand grabbed hold of the edge of the door, threw it open so it banged into the wall, tearing off one of the hinges. The door sagged, swung back leaning on its only remaining hinge, hitting against the shoulder of the body that now filled the door opening.

What do you want from me?

There were still patches of blue on the shirt that covered the body to the knees. The rest was a dirty map of earth, mud, stains of something Eli's nose identified as animal blood, human blood. The shirt was torn in several places revealing white skin etched with scratches that would never heal.

His face had not changed. It was still a clumsily fashioned mass of naked flesh with one single red eye thrown in as if for fun, a ripe cherry to top a rotten cake. But his mouth was open now.

A black hole in the lower half of the face. No lips that could cover the teeth that were therefore revealed; an uneven semicircle of white that made the oral cavity seem even darker. The hole increased and decreased in size with a chewing motion and out of it came: "Eeeiiiijj."

You couldn't hear if the sound was supposed to mean "Hi," "Hey" or "Eli" since the "L" had to be formed without the help of lips or tongue. Eli pointed the stake at Hakan's heart, said, "Hi."

What do you want?

The undead. Eli knew nothing about them. Didn't know if the creature in front of him was limited by the same restrictions as he was. If it even helped to destroy the heart. That Hakan was standing still in the doorway seemed to imply one thing: that he needed an invitation.

Hakan's gaze ran up and then down over Eli's body, which felt unprotected in the thin, yellow dress. He wished there were more to the fabric, more protection between his body and Hakan. Tentatively Eli held the stake closer to Hakan's chest.

Can he feel anything? Can he even feel… fear now?

Eli experienced a feeling that he had almost forgotten: fear of pain. Everything healed of course, but there was such an overpowering sense of threat emanating from Hakan that…

"What do you want?"

A hollow, rasping sound as the creature pressed out air and a drop of yellowish, viscous liquid ran out of the double hole where the nose had been. A sigh? Then a damaged whisper: "Aaaaaaijjjj…" and one arm flinched quickly, cramplike,

baby movements

clumsily grabbed the shirt down at the hem, pulled it up.

Hakan's penis stood out from his body to one side, craving attention, and Eli looked at its stiff swolleness crisscrossed with veins and-

How can he… he must have had it the whole time.

"Aaeejjlll…"

Hakan's hand pulled the foreskin aggressively up and back, up and back, and the head of his penis appeared and disappeared, appeared and disappeared like a jack-in-the-box while he uttered a sound of pleasure or suffering.

"Aaaee…"

And Eli laughed with relief.

All this. To be able to jack off.

He could stand there, rooted to the spot until… until…

Can he even get it off? He's going to have to stand there… forever.

Eli imagined one of those obscene dolls that you wound up with a key; a monk whose cape went up and he started masturbating as long as the mechanism allowed.

clickety-click, clickety-click…

Eli laughed, was so occupied with the crazy image that he didn't notice when Hakan stepped into the room, uninvited. Didn't notice anything until the fist that had just been sealed around an impossible pleasure was raised above his head.

With a flashing spasm the arm came down and the fist landed over Eli's ear with a force that could have killed a horse. The blow came sideways and Eli's ear was folded in with such force that the skin split and half the ear was separated from his head, which was thrown abruptly down, meeting the cement floor with a muffled crack.

When Tommy realized that the thing that was out in the corridor was not on its way to the shelter, he dared to take his hand from his mouth. He sat pressed into the corner and listened, trying to understand.

The girl's voice.

Hi. What do you want.

Then her laugh. And then that other voice. Didn't even sound like it came from a human being. Then muffled thuds, the sounds of bodies moving.

Now there was some kind of… rearranging going on out there. Something was dragged across the floor and Tommy was not planning to find out what it was. But the sounds disguised those he would make as he stood up and felt his way along the wall to the stacked boxes.

His heart was pattering like a toy drum and his hands shook. He didn't dare light his lighter, so in order to concentrate better he shut his eyes and searched with his hand over the top of the boxes.

His fingers clenched around what they found. Staffan's shooting trophy. He carefully lifted it from its place, tested it in his hand. If he held the figure's chest the stone base made a kind of club. He opened his eyes, found that he could vaguely make out the outline of the little silver pistol shooter.

Friend. My little friend.

With the trophy pressed against his chest he sank down into the corner against the wall and waited for all this to finally be over.

Eli was being handled, like an object.

While he was swimming to the surface of the darkness he had sunk into he felt how his body, at a distance, in another part of the sea… was being handled.

Intense pressure against his back, legs that were forced up, back, and iron rings pulled tight around his ankles. Now the ankles with their iron rings were on either side of his head and his spine was tight, so stretched it felt like it was about to snap.

I'm going to break.

His head felt like a container of gleaming pain, as his body was doubled over by force, folded up like a bolt of fabric and Eli thought he was still having an hallucination because when his eyes started to see again, they only saw yellow. And behind the yellow a massive, billowing shadow.

Then came the cold. Something was rubbing a ball of ice across the thin skin between his buttocks. Something tried, first poking, then thrusting, to force its way into him. Eli gasped; the fabric of the dress that had been spread over his face was blown aside, and he saw.

Hakan was lying over him. His only eye was staring fixedly at Eli's spread buttocks. His hands were locked around Eli's ankles. His legs had been brutally bent back so that his knees were pressed to the ground on

either side of Eli's shoulders and when Hakan pressed harder Eli heard how the tendons in the back of his thighs broke like tightly pulled strings.

"Noooo!"

Eli screamed into Hakan's shapeless face where no feelings at all could be discerned. A strand of drool came out of Hakan's mouth, stretched and broke, falling onto Eli's lips, and the taste of corpse filled his mouth. Eli's arms fell out from his body as limp as a rag doll's.

Something under his fingers. Round, hard.