I would like to take the time to thank you, the readers, again for giving me the chance to tell you my version of John Ajvide Lindqvist's hit story, Let the Right One In. I plan on making this a long series in order to develop these characters for a future project that has been sitting in the back of my mind. Until then, sit back and enjoy the rest of the story. Thank you and have a good read!

CHAPTER 2

Los Alamos, New Mexico: 14 November 1981

Tommy hung his head, emotionless and eyes staring blankly at his upturned palms. Every so often he would blink, ever so slowly and without purpose other than to inadvertently remind himself of the horror that he witnessed in that storage room. A pile of flesh and blood, pieces of muscle tissue, and the severely crushed head. Anything that was still intact, continued to move. As if it wanted to rise, as if the thing still had some will to live. It was a reoccurring nightmare and what made it worse was the fact that Tommy didn't have to sleep to live it.

He sat on his mother's couch, swaying slowly and uncontrolled, side to side, as if in a trance like state of emotionless slumber. Tommy was in and out of reality, whispering to himself, 'Two thousand and ninety-three elephants on a teensy spider web…thought it was fun…went and got a friend'. An old rhyme that his deceased father would recite to calm him. Though now it is almost as sign of Tommy's insanity that worsens day by day.

There is an inner voice, the voice that keeps attempting to break Tommy out of his vegetative state. It is his own voice, trapped inside his own head.

Wake up! This won't end here, remember everything you told Oscar…

Tommy could see blood on his hands, although clearly not there, his mind was broken and very much stuck in the past. Back to the time when he nearly destroyed that face, the body. He kept swinging and swinging the trophy that was now a weapon, until the body stopped moving. There lied the problem, the body itself wouldn't stop moving no matter how deformed it became. It was nearly a pile of pulp when his step-father, Steven, came in and grabbed the trophy from his hands. Even then the abomination that laid before him, still twitched with life. That was the moment he broke.

The moment that told him, the undead were real and definitely dangerous. Even when Abby had taken his blood for her own consumption, Tommy still had doubts. That maybe the girl was crazy and truly believed in the fallacy of being a vampire. A creature bound to the night and forced to drink human blood. It was out of the question. Vampires weren't real, and that was that. It all become all too real when he had to fight for his life against what amounted to nothing more than a corpse. Now vampires existed and they were still out there. This is what sent Tommy into despair, and what left behind a husk of what he once was.

Take your own damned advice!

Nothing could draw Tommy out of his current being. When his Mom and Steven spoke, it was mumbled, and the only reason he knew there was sound was due to the human contact that would follow. They shook him, they caressed him, and they even moved him to different rooms for his basic needs, such as sleeping, eating and to use the bathroom, but to no avail. Tommy shut the world out, which was the only way his consciousness knew how to respond.

When the police came with questions, which was no surprise as even Steven had thought that Tommy was behind the burglary of a radio store a week and a half ago, it wasn't that out of the question he killed someone. That was before all the facts started coming together. The man that Tommy had 'killed' was already dead, he had committed suicide by jumping out of the hospital that he was admitted into. The police then realized that the man was the murderer who strung up a teenage boy and drained him of his blood. What the police didn't know was that all of these intertwining clues hit Tommy all at once the moment he stepped away from that corpse the night of his incident.

Tommy had remembered seeing the man with the girl, who had just paid him for blood. Then thought about the fact that the first kid murdered in Los Alamos was bled dry and no pool of blood was left under him. All it took was Tommy's imagination of the undead and what he knew of the strange events happening in his town, to send him spiraling down into insanity.

That was all before the police began talking about how that pile of meat was the murderer. In a sense, the police had sealed up Tommy's fate and they didn't even know it.

You can't give up…after all you've been through…all that you now know…

Tommy turned his head towards the living room window and stood up. That was the first movement he made without the help of either his Mother or Steven.

"Oh Tommy!" His mother's cry could be heard from behind him, "Steven come! He's moving again." The thumping of footsteps grew louder as Tommy stood near the window.

Tommy felt his Mother's arms wrap around his body and her head against his back. He could feel the tears soak through his clothes as he stood still emotionless, still not there.

His mind fought over the choice of whether to fight and live or to shut down and die. It wanted him to forget everything so badly, just so he could waste away and die. Although his mind and body wanted to hide away, Tommy's true self wanted to move, wanted to think, and wanted the truth. What was the thing he killed in the storage room? Who was the girl that took his blood? What really happened in Los Alamos?

Tommy had no answers but he did know there was one common factor in all of this mess, Oscar.

That's it! Oscar. What did you tell Oscar the first time he came up to you all beaten and bloodied?

His body was coming back to him and his mind became free of the fog that clouded over his thoughts. Tommy looked down and began thinking.

Remember your own damned advice!

Tommy remembered Oscar. Remembered all they're encounters. He always had a soft side for Oscar and maybe that was because he actually thought of him as a friend. Tommy had a flashback of Oscar walking away from him, clearly he was sad but he never talked about what was wrong. Then he remembered it all too clearly.

Fight back!

Tommy snapped to attention as if he had just awoken from a deep sleep then asked, "Can I use the phone mom? Please?"

"What for?" His mother replied, clearly shocked by her son's random question after being out of his mind for a whole week.

Tommy had to think of the right way to say this, or his plan wouldn't work, "I have to let Robert know that I'm okay. They've gotta be worried."

"Okay," was all his Mother could say.

Tommy then walked to the phone near his room and dialed Robert's number. Robert answered in a surprised tone.

"Tommy? Is that you?"

"Yeah dude."

"What happened to you? I heard you went to shit!"

"Look, I'll tell yeah everything in a minute but I need your help right now. Got it?"

"Uh, yeah, what's up?"

Tommy looks over his shoulder to make sure his Mother, and definitely not Steven, are looming around the corner listening in, "I need you to let Larry know…that we're meeting up at midnight. Tonight."

"Wait, what?" Robert answers, baffled by how straightforward Tommy is. "Cops are all over this fucking town! We'll get caught and they'll try to tie us with the damned crime we pulled!"

"Grow a pair of balls and just do it, okay? Fucking trust me," Tommy listens but there is only silence on the other end. "Hey, can you do that for me?" Tommy asks again.

"Fucken hell Tommy, fine. I'll see you tonight," Robert hangs up the phone and Tommy lets out a sigh of relief.

Tommy walks down the stairs, acting groggy and disoriented, still trying to play as if he just broke out of his previous state of being. He can see Steven in the kitchen drinking what looks like water and his Mother is laying on the couch. Tommy looks to the small table by the apartment door and sees an envelope with his name on it. Tommy looks towards Steven, then towards his Mother, and quickly snatches the envelope and hides it in the waste of his pants, under his shirt. Tommy then walked to his room and shut the door.

With the envelope in his hand, he looked at the front first, which had a clear outline of money but he could not tell how much was inside. Then Tommy looked at his name on the back of the envelope and thought to himself, a slight smile on his face, "Oscar, you're just full of surprises aren't you."