Who loves Abby?

[EEA]

To me the film is also about escape. Owen wants to leave since there is nothing for him in the town that he lives in. For Abby is trying to find a way to break the cycle that she continues with Thomas but she does not know how to ended. For Abby I felt simpathy since she wants to find someone to understand her. This is what I felt when she asks Owen if he is reading Romeo and Juliet. This is something that could bring them closer but instead Owen gives the wrong answer. I wanted to smack him at that moment and say "Hey this book is important to her" jeje I see on Abby's face the hope that he might have said that he liked the book but instead she is dissapointed when he says the book is boring.

[jetboy]

Yes LMI, to me is as much about Abbeys, not so much lonliness as fear of lonliness, as it is about Owens hatred of his life. LTROI is more about the power of love, and what it actually is and how it works including what happens with the absence of it. The characters are less important than the theme. Oskar represent anykid and Eli represents what the anykid longs for in his (or her) soul.

[Casper]

This is what I felt when she asks Owen if he is reading Romeo and Juliet. This is something that could bring them closer but instead Owen gives the wrong answer. I wanted to smack him at that moment and say "Hey this book is important to her" jeje I see on Abby's face the hope that he might have said that he liked the book but instead she is dissapointed when he says the book is boring.

I felt the same way here. But it's cool with his look on the bus, when he obviously reads that same passage that was in the note.

[ofelia]

EEA wrote:
This is what I felt when she asks Owen if he is reading Romeo and Juliet. This is something that could bring them closer but instead Owen gives the wrong answer. I wanted to smack him at that moment and say "Hey this book is important to her" jeje I see on Abby's face the hope that he might have said that he liked the book but instead she is dissapointed when he says the book is boring.


I felt the same way here. But it's cool with his look on the bus, when he obviously reads that same passage that was in the note.

I think it signifies how he's changing, that at first he didn't see past all the long words and then when he reads the note he thinks okay, there's something meaningful here.

I know this is supposed to be who loves Abby, but I have to say Owen's scenes with the bullies were way more effective for me than Oskar's. That's how I thought it would be, based on the book.

[DavidZahir]

The focus in LMI is almost relentlessly Owen-centric, so we shouldn't be surprised at how much he changes over the course of the film. Reading Romeo and Juliet makes one of many little signs of change. He goes from timid voyeur to someone with a girlfriend. Owen at first doesn't seem to think much about morality but later must make a genuine choice. We all notice how he runs away and cries when faced with bullies at the beginning--then fights back and at least faces the threat at the swimming pool with courage. Even his reaction to the reality of Abby's true nature evolves, from shock and indignation to acceptance (notice how he initially cannot look at her when she's covered in blood?).

So the answer to the question of this thread "Who loves Abby?" seems obvious.

Owen.

[sauvin]

The focus in LMI is almost relentlessly Owen-centric,

Now that you mention it, yes, it is. LTROI had a few minutes to spare for the China Restaurant Gang, and even a few seconds for Lacke and Virginia together, and Virginia alone. LMI seems to spend the bulk of its time with Owen, Owen and Abby or the cop.

so we shouldn't be surprised at how much he changes over the course of the film. Reading Romeo and Juliet makes one of many little signs of change. He goes from timid voyeur to someone with a girlfriend.

In the process of changing, maybe. His reading Romeo and Juliet for real has something to do with watching the movie in class while putting together his Morse Code thing for Abby, so we can't really say he's developing an appreciation for literary art per se. He's still a voyeur after he has his girlfriend, still snooping around with his telescope, although I'll admit the next time I remember him sweeping the available horizon, he's fully clothed (as I recall), not wearing a mask or indulging violent fantasies, and generally seems just a bit more composed.

He's still timid. One begins to fear he always will be.

Owen at first doesn't seem to think much about morality but later must make a genuine choice.

What choice did he really make?

His attempt at sounding his father out on the telephone about the existence of evil after the clubhouse scene may well represent his very first experience with having to consider that maybe everything he'd been hearing from his mother and whatever churches he might have been dragged off to might just be not wholly a bunch of mindless hot air.

I don't think he realised immediately he'd just seen a vampire. It may have taken his shocked mind and assaulted sensibilities a bit of time to start gathering themselves back together again, just as it did both movie and novel Oskar. Eventually, he did start realising something of what Abby was, and he had no framework to evaluate it within except popular contemporary religion.

Yes, he had to go through disbelief and struggle with acceptance, but I believe he'd initially rejected her. I believe his visit to Abby's apartment may have been partly out of hope he'd hallucinated the clubhouse scene somehow, and partly to demand answers.

If anything, he'd rejected her even more by the time he'd left her apartment, having seen younger Thomas' image in the photo booth pictures and probably understanding their significance. Unlike Oskar, who had been struggling at least partly with the moral implications of her money cache, Owen's concern was chiefly with his inability to live with this kind of nightmare.

He didn't visit her again, remember. She sought him out. Eli visited Oskar, too, but I don't believe Eli had as much reason to fear it was all well and truly over. Eli had survived Oskar's confrontation and had actually spent some relaxed, casual chitchat before the money issue erupted. Owen just left in an affronted huff.

Owen didn't start having feelings for her again until she bled out.

Okar asked "Who are you?" Much more personal, and also much more loaded with moral context. That's not what Owen asked, it's not what he was concerned with. He asked "What was that?" while he continues to digest the fact that his would-have-been almost-was ex-girlfriend is a vampire.

Evil she might be, a murderess, but what was standing before him now was very clear evidence that vampires can suffer, too. They can be hurt, and maybe they can even die when their hearts are broken.

And they can be driven to taking insane chances for love. "What would have happened", he asked, "if I'd not said you could come in? Would you have kept bleeding? Would you have died?" Her response pretty much sealed the deal for Owen: "I knew you wouldn't let me". He was being reminded very strongly that his girlfriend was just like him - human - and that what he held in his arms was still the girl who paid attention to him, enjoyed spending time with him and cared about him. What's more - and both Owen and Oskar had to have realised this, too, immediately - each girl was expressing a faith in her boyfriend that he didn't have in himself. In Owen's case particularly, it may well have been the first time something like this has ever happened.

We all notice how he runs away and cries when faced with bullies at the beginning--then fights back and at least faces the threat at the swimming pool with courage. Even his reaction to the reality of Abby's true nature evolves, from shock and indignation to acceptance (notice how he initially cannot look at her when she's covered in blood?).

We all notice at the pool scene Owen did indeed run off to his locker to get his little toothpick of a weapon. Was this knife again supposed to be some kind of symbol? Forgetting allusions involving the "phalliform" for a moment, consider here's a small kid with a small knife trying to face off against several much larger, stronger, faster and meaner kids. Owen knew he'd been defeated even before he was able to bring the knife into play - his knife was going to be just as ineffectual as he was. I don't get that he faced the pool scene with courage. I saw desperation.

And I don't see a moral component to Owen's decision to leave Los Alamos with her. He had almost died at the pool scene, and intelligent twelve year old Owen to have realised his presence there in tandem with a dead cop soon to be (if not already) discovered in his basement is bound to subject him to more massively indifferent and often cruel institutional attention. He was grateful to Abby for saving his life, and he didn't actually want to be all alone again.

And, if my interpretation of the facial expressions I saw on his face as he gazed up at her while he was still half in the pool are at all accurate...

... he was afraid not to.

So the answer to the question of this thread "Who loves Abby?" seems obvious.

Owen.

Maybe, and maybe not. Probably, though.

But that's not what I was asking. You, David, apparently love Abby. So do I, even if she has to play second fiddle to Eli in my heart.

What I was really asking is: who in this forum loves Abby?

[DavidZahir]

Owen didn't start having feelings for her again until she bled out.

Not to be too pedantic (too late!) I don't believe this is how emotions work. He already cared for her, which is a major reason he went to see her after the event in the basement rather than simply avoid her! He behaves exactly as if there's been a betrayal, and a shocking revelation involving someone with whom he has a deep emotional connection--which is accurate. But that doesn't mean he has stopped having feelings for her. Quite the opposite. But when she nearly bleeds out, his immediate reaction tells him beyond doubt how strong--and positive--those feelings are.

And they can be driven to taking insane chances for love. "What would have happened", he asked, "if I'd not said you could come in? Would you have kept bleeding? Would you have died?" Her response pretty much sealed the deal for Owen: "I knew you wouldn't let me". He was being reminded very strongly that his girlfriend was just like him - human - and that what he held in his arms was still the girl who paid attention to him, enjoyed spending time with him and cared about him. What's more - and both Owen and Oskar had to have realised this, too, immediately - each girl was expressing a faith in her boyfriend that he didn't have in himself. In Owen's case particularly, it may well have been the first time something like this has ever happened.

Yes, oh yes.

And, if my interpretation of the facial expressions I saw on his face as he gazed up at her while he was still half in the pool are at all accurate...

... he was afraid not to.

That I don't agree with at all. Owen wept when Abby had to leave. By that time he wasn't afraid of Abby, even when she's standing there covered in the blood of a dead policeman. She just kept her promise and helped him, almost certainly saving his life. He's upset by what she is, by what she must do. But he just doesn't seem afraid of Abby per se. Not least because she has never, ever, even once seemed aggressive towards him. At most she stepped in the way to keep him from leaving, then withdrew after a word from him. When in the throws of bloodlust, she told him to go away and when he didn't, ran away herself rather than hurt him (that is how I see Owen interpreting what happened, given his actions later).

[sauvin]

And, if my interpretation of the facial expressions I saw on his face as he gazed up at her while he was still half in the pool are at all accurate...
... he was afraid not to.

That I don't agree with at all. Owen wept when Abby had to leave. By that time he wasn't afraid of Abby, even when she's standing there covered in the blood of a dead policeman. She just kept her promise and helped him, almost certainly saving his life. He's upset by what she is, by what she must do. But he just doesn't seem afraid of Abby per se. Not least because she has never, ever, even once seemed aggressive towards him. At most she stepped in the way to keep him from leaving, then withdrew after a word from him. When in the throws of bloodlust, she told him to go away and when he didn't, ran away herself rather than hurt him (that is how I see Owen interpreting what happened, given his actions later).

Let’s have a look at Abby, shall we? And maybe a bit more at Owen? Because, see, I have a question.

She’s young. To an American, this seems a very important thing, but to Owen, who is the same age, it’s an especially strong bonus.

Virginia is young, too, and really pretty, but somehow, we just can’t see him hooking up with her. She’s twentysomething, looks like, just maybe very early thirtysomething, and to a man with a greying moustache she’s just about the perfect age for enjoying a raging midlife crisis with, but Owen hasn’t even had time yet to suffer a prelife crisis. No, Virginia is very definitely out of reach for a number of reasons, not the least of which they’d be on very uneven terms together in all sorts of different ways. Besides, she already has a boyfriend or husband who, by the way, would probably beat the snot out of him just for thinking about it.

To preteen Owen, maybe Abby is a really old-looking ten year old, or she could be a pretty young-looking fourteen year old, and that might be about the span of difference he could tolerate easily. They’d probably listen to the same kinds of music, admire the same kinds of music stars, maybe even watch the same kinds of movies or read the same kinds of books or play the same kinds of games. In other words, she’s “generationally” and culturally “appropriate” for him.

Yea, she’s a little weird. Barefoot in the snow? Forgot how to be cold? Horks up on single piece of candy? Doesn’t know exactly how old she is? OK, maybe she’s more than just a little weird, and what’s up with this business about never coming out in the daytime, anyway? Is she that busy during the day? What with?

It doesn’t matter, though, does it?

Wasn’t so much to look at or be around the first time or two, but boy howdy, she sure cleaned up proper after he said something about her smelling funny, didn’t she? Ran a couple gallons of Prell through the hair, maybe, along with only $goddess knows what kind of conditioners. Used Dial and Right Guard, maybe, and maybe her clothes smell of Tide and Downy? She gots skin the average teenage girl would cheerfully murder for, and if her teeth aren’t perfectly even, who cares? They’re white and they’re healthy looking and give the girl a mind-numbingly pretty smile. And if you were to be fortunate enough to get her in a really good hug, wouldn’t you just bet you could smell lilacs, Gleam, Lavoris and Bazooka bubble gum?

And if the clothes she’s wearing look like they might have come more from Kmart than from Montgomery Ward, well, who cares? He’s not exactly from the Vanderbilt line himself, and her clothes are in great condition, look great together, and she fills them in very nicely in the ways a twelve year old boy would care about. Yes sir, she definitely looks somehow right in a dress.

The weirdness, it kinda works for him. Owen’s weird, too, has to be in some way he doesn’t understand if all these kids are picking on him so much, or avoiding him, and if his home life seems so much different from what he’s learned to expect from whatever glimpses he might have had of other kids’ home lives and (argh!) from what he might have been deceived into believing from watching too much television of his own when Mom isn’t around. Maybe... just maybe... her weirdness and his weirdness might be compatible?

Abby is open, contrary to what she might have said when they first met. She shares his toys with him and even tries to help him enjoy them more. She spends more and more time with him, and never laughs at him - when she does laugh, like when he wipes out at the Pacman game, it’s not derisive or condescending or something, she’s just amused and having a good time. She listens to him, seems to understand him and tries to offer good advice.

She doesn’t just pay attention to him. She’s not just being nice. She’s actually with him, having a good time with him. Being a friend.

Being an ally.

That twinkle in her eye, it’s a diamond purer and clearer than anything you’ll ever dig out of the earth, and the peals of her laughter, they’re the flutterings of a flute and the tinklings of a piano more expensive and better tuned than any mortal man can ever hope to experience, playing bouncy happy tunes no mortal man could ever compose. She doesn’t walk, she just sorta glides a few inches above the ground.

Yea, the boy’s in love. No doubt about it.

Owen’s started growing up, but only just. There’s a little man living in the basement of his mind, more ancient than mankind and really wanting nothing more than to see mankind get a whole lot older. It’s just now waking up, looking at Abby and making all kinds of noises about wife, children and 2.5 colour TV sets, but the language it speaks isn’t one that Owen even recognises yet, let alone understands. Raw animal lust translates into a simple desire for walking along a beach hand in hand, and the desire for a home of its own comes to Owen as just wanting to hide away with her and play a few games of Backgammon while listening to the radio.

He probably wouldn’t feel this way about her quite so strongly if he weren’t such a marginalised and alienated kid. All the social experience most “healthy” kids get from a variety of sources, Owen now depends on Abby for. Seems a safe enough bet, though.

If he were to admit he cries every time he hears Nilsson wailing “I guess that’s just the way the story goes/you always smiled, but in your eyes, your sorrow showed” or confide that he blubbers helplessly when Carmen hijacks a Rachmaninoff tune “all by myself/ don’t want to live/ all by myself anymore”, he can feel very confident she won’t call him a stupid sloppy sentimental “little girl” (which is probably more like “[deleted]”) who listens to “old folk music”. She’d just smile a toothless little smile, tinged with just a bit of sadness, and say “Yea, I know exactly what you mean”. Owen wouldn’t have to fear she’d poke fun at him for admitting he can hear the pain in Carpenter’s voice when she explains “I fell in love with you before the second show” because he can somehow sense she’d understand without being able to put in words just how powerful that “sad, sweet guitar” can be.

And oh, yea, she’s a girl, but... she’s more than just a girl, isn’t she? Ever notice the way she moves? The way she talks? The way she is? A little quiet sometimes, maybe, but quiet isn’t the same as shy, and maybe she’s just a bit strange sometimes, but strange isn’t the same as silly. She’s got something a twelve year old would notice without necessarily being able to put a finger on it: confidence. She has an easy confidence about her, maybe a kind of certain knowledge that whatever comes down the pike, she’ll have the strength and intelligence to be able to deal with it. Is that attractive to most boys? It certainly was to a twelve year old Sauvin! - and it was something to admire about her... and something to envy.

She’s a major goddess, and just being near her makes him feel wanted, and needed, and powerful. Her responding to him the way she does just makes him feel that much more wanted, and that much more needed, and above all, that much more powerful.

In other words, Sauvin could take her or leave her. She’s clearly nothing compared to Eli, but she does have a vague appeal.

In another time, in another place, he’d have married her, right there, on the spot. That’s the Abby that Owen sees right up until just after he tries to do something rather akin to marriage with his proposed blood bond.

You’ve seen Abby’s game face. Does it really need to be described? Aw, what the heck...

Did you check out American Abby's game face? Revolting, isn't it? Her face looks like a hairless bat's that lost an argument with a battering ram, drooling mouth pulled down into a permanently exaggerated sour expression, small, flat and dirty teeth widely gapped? Forget about those supernaturally cracked-out eyes for a bit, and just look at what you remember of her face without those eyes. Here's a young lady whose family tree doesn't branch and includes maybe a little too much Thalidomide.

If this were the face of a real girl, it'd be the face of a twelve-going-on-thirteen who already knows she'll never get to go to the Senior Prom. She'll never go on to college, work in a professional setting or have 2.3 kids and four colour TV sets in her twelve room country manse. She'd already been told far too many times, in too many ways and too many places that she's just not welcome in human society, that she'd be better off hiding in her house and never showing her face in public.

Is this the face of something that's completely self-centered? [deleted], yes, it is! - and she didn't learn to be "me first" by herself.

Far from being a werewolf (or werewif, or werehunnybunny, or whatever), she's the diametric opposite of the Twilight bunch: the distorted stereotype of an American teenager unmasked.

I’ve since then additionally conjectured she looks like she smells of clabbered milk, rotted cabbage and maybe raw hamburger that sat in the fridge a few months too many.

She is, in other words, repulsive. Revolting. Puke-making.

She's a genuine monster.

So, here’s Owen at the metaphorical altar, and here’s Abby, down on her hands and knees in front of him, lapping his blood up off the filthy floor, and making this sound. These aren’t the peals of heavenly laughter that intoxicated his soul or the clear, mellifluous voice that could make him believe he’s hearing the thoughts of an angel; these are, in fact, the low growlings something even more ancient than his subconscious little man can easily recognise as a carnivorous animal. A large one.

And then he gets to see that face. Those lips that nobody in his right mind could ever want to kiss. He sees a beast nothing human could ever even remotely hope to love - or be loved by.

Was he unsettled? Was he unnerved? Unmanned, even? You betcha! And if he had wet his pants, who could have blamed him?

This was not the Abby he’d wanted to sign up with! Not at ALL!

He doesn’t know anything right away, but he pieces enough together quickly enough to try to ask both his parents about the nature of evil, because this is the only framework he knows how to work within. We’ll not go into Christian demonology, especially since I have no freaking idea what kind of hare-brained cult or cults he might have been forced to endure - and there are many - we’ll just say that if she isn’t a goddess (or, within said framework, an “angel”), then it’s pretty clear that maybe these cults weren’t so full of hot air as folks would have him believe, because he’s just narrowly missed being lunched down on by something that just has to have been some kind of escapee from the deepest, hottest and most sulfurous depths of [deleted].

He doesn’t know anything right away, but pieces enough together to demand not long after if she’s a vampire. Maybe a very important clue had been her insistence that he invite her into his bedroom, and maybe requiring that she invite him into her apartment was a kind of payback for her having lied to him about such an important thing about herself. She’d never lied to him that I can remember, but to Owen’s young and direct mind, omission of this sort is every bit as [deleted] as an outright lie.

He’d been betrayed.

Why did he go back to her? To demand answers? To have her prove he’d just hallucinated the whole clubhouse scene, to reassure him that his goddess wasn’t gone and that everything was going to be OK?

She admits she’s a vampire, admits her age, lets him see the photos of her “father”. So, now, she’s not just a growling infernal beast of some kind who “needs blood to live”, she also manipulates little boys into lifetime service? And if all their shouting and slamming doors is any indication of what such life might be, is this anything he would want?

Nope! Outta here! (maybe I shouldn’t have come here to begin with, maybe I’m already dead, maybe I should have fled the basement myself, stopped at the apartment just long enough to throw together a suitcase and get out of Dodge THIS INSTANT!)

So, now Owen knows. She’s a beauty, and that beauty is almost impossible to ignore. She’s also a beast, and that beast, too, is almost impossible to ignore.

(Can’t flee, nowhere to go, and there’s still a life here to life (I guess) if she’ll let me live it. Can’t really stay here, either, but guess I’ll have to, eh? Can’t live with her, that’s a fact! (but, can I live without her, really?))

I see Owen being of two minds, almost literally, when Abby knocks on his door. I don’t understand why he wasn’t a quivering bundle of pants-wetting nerves when he opened the door and saw it was her, but maybe her body language and facial expression had something to do with that. She wasn’t angry or upset or anything, she just looked... what? Tired? Dejected? Subdued? Not at all like a demonic beast who’s intent on having him for dinner, or maybe just ripping a few chunks out of him to keep him quiet.

Besides, she did let him leave her apartment, didn’t she?

This is why I say he didn’t start having feelings for her again until she bled out. Those feelings never went away - how could they? - but they had been heavily overlaid with something disgusting, horrifying, and apparently thoroughly evil.

It’s a mistake to say of anybody that he’s “simple”. Some people are deeper than others, and some more complicated; some have quicker wit, and others more prone to ponder and reflect. In another meaning of the word “simple”, people rarely only have one thought or emotion at a time. It’s much more usually the case that we’ll experience blends of emotions, complex and crazy little patchwork quilts done by raving seamstresses zorked out on acid. We DO sometimes laugh honestly even when we’re angry, and we are often very loving, gentle and understanding even when we’re at our least tolerant.

Abby stood in front of him, probably dying. His first love. His best friend. His goddess.

This isn’t something he’s ever seen before, and probably doesn’t understand very well. He doesn’t have to. As I’ve said before, Owen, being no idiot, understands now very well that vampires can be hurt, that they can suffer. Maybe he even understands that they can be driven to taking insane chances. She was dying in front of him because he demanded it.

And he started having feelings for her again, stronger feelings than before, because she’d expressed in him a faith he’d probably never felt in himself. Maybe nobody else has ever trusted him to anything even remotely like this degree.

And it’s at this point, I think even without any vampire girl pleading “bli mig lite”, that he understands that Abby really is everything he’d thought she was, it’s just that she has some pretty ghastly baggage to deal with.

Sure, she’s a beast. Sure, she’s uglier than anything the Devil could puke up in his worst nightmare. Yea, maybe she kills people.

But what did she ever do to him?

She’s back, fresh out of the shower, and the nightmare is already receding. She’s smiling, smelling of soap and shampoo and all the other accoutrements of civilised living. Her easy confidence has returned.

His goddess has come back to him.

(And oh, by the way, Owen, wasn’t that little man in the basement of your mind trying in that strange primitive foreign language of his to say something about how appealing she is dressed in only a towel?)

(She jumped out the window!? Omigod, somebody call... wait... she’s not there on the ground. She’s in her apartment? How’d she..? Oh, yea, right. Vampire. Vampires can fly, right? Aw, who cares, we’ll think about that later, what’s important is she’s OK, when the bad stuff was over we had a little bit of fun, and now I’m OK. And man, o man, isn’t she the prettiest thing you ever saw in your whole life when she’s smiling and laughing?)

And now, the cop. She takes him down, looking like she’s intent on putting the world’s biggest hickie on his throat, and shrieking like nothing he’d ever heard before or ever wants to hear again.

What’s he feeling? I have no freaking clue; I think my mind would have blanked out if I’d been in his shoes. And afterwards, when she comes out to thank him for her life, to say she has to go away? To kiss him? Maybe by now he gets that she doesn’t want him for food. Look how many chances she’s had! and he’d just spent a whole night with her, looks like, and probably had nothing but all kinds of fun, games, laughter and so on, never having any clue that he was going to lose his goddess in less than a day.

I think I’d just be frozen. Numb. Completely and absolutely empty. I wouldn’t know what to think or what to feel.

I’d be (hee hee) a zombie.

He cried when Abby left? Sure did! I would have, too. Say whatever else you want about Abby, he could still remember all the good times they’d had together - and to a twelve year old, three weeks of good times can seem like a lifetime. No more twinkle in the eye to be mesmerised by, never again to feel like the King of Life, the Universe and Everything just because she’s walking with you side by side. The beast might be gone, but so is all the beauty.

He’s all alone. Again.

Did he remember the cop while he was busy missing her? Did he remember her growling on her hands and feet in front of him in the basement? Maybe not. Memory can play funny tricks in times of great stress or great loss. He’s just crying because he misses his goddess.

And now, we’re down to it. The pool scene.

As said before, the knife Owen found so comforting and kept in his locker looked pretty stupid when he faced several boys, any of whom easily outmassed him. When he wasn’t busy screaming in terror or in pain as his back was being dragged across a rough tile floor, did he have time to fear for his life? Maybe not, it would have seemed inconceivable that they’d actually kill him, but as his head was being held underwater for what he’d been promised would be a very long time, the danger that he might actually die had to have loomed very large in his mind. That thought is scary enough when you’re in your fifties, but when there are more yesterdays than tomorrows, the idea of imminent death doesn’t seem such an evil thing. But to a twelve year old boy? Again, I can’t imagine what that must have been like, so we’ll just say he wasn’t having any fun.

Screaming happens. Shrieks happen. Heads fall into the water, and maybe other body parts. Owen hasn’t been underwater long enough to have started losing it - he sees what’s going on without being able to understand or decipher it, and it’s happening so fast! There’s blood everywhere, and suddenly, he’s able to push himself up towards air.

It’s over now. The screaming and the shrieking are done.

And there’s Abby, standing above him about a million feet tall, but he can see her face clearly.

We don’t know how the conversation went down. Did he ask her to take him away, or did she ask him? Maybe she didn’t ask, maybe she put it more as a “suggestion”, or maybe even a direct order, but I don’t think so.

Why might Owen have asked her to take him away? I might have, if I’d looked around and seen all the carnage. If I’d remembered that one of those heads had a bifurcated ear because I’d whacked it a good one with a metal pole. If I’d feared having to face schools and police to explain that a vampire cause all this carnage. If I’d feared being hauled away to a “detention centre” or a “treatment centre” for psychiatric examination. If I’d rather take my chances with a vampire girl who seemed to give two [deleted]s if I lived or died where nobody else seemed to. But of all the thoughts going through my head after having seen all that, I don’t think I’d have been dwelling on my goddess too much.

And if she’d asked him? Dude, didn’t you check out what happened to the cop who invaded her personal space? Didn’t you scope out all these broken and mangled bodies in the swimming pool? YOU wanna be the one to risk [deleted] Abby off? You do want to live, don’t you? Give the girl what she wants, and do it with a respectful smile, and pray she never gets mad at YOU!

So, now, my question. You’re half in the swimming pool, and half out. You’ve almost died, and you know it. There’s Abby, your goddess and your indescribably revolting refugee from [deleted] standing about a million feet tall, and you’re looking up at her from her feet. She’s just terminated with extreme prejudice several boys in almost less time than it takes to tell, and she’s wearing their blood, body parts and gore. Did he see the Abby with the Wella Balsam hair and the easy, inviting smile, or did he see the sour-faced wombat-Neandertal genetic experiment gone horribly awry?

Which Abby did he see in that moment?

Edit: 5 Novembre 2011, replaced a "bad word" with [deleted] to comply with renewed restrictions on language.

Edit: 5 Novembre 2011, replaced a "bad word" with [deleted] to comply with renewed restrictions on language.

Edit: 5 Novembre 2011, replaced a "bad word" with [deleted] to comply with renewed restrictions on language.

Edit: 5 Novembre 2011, replaced a "bad word" with [deleted] to comply with renewed restrictions on language.

Edit: 5 Novembre 2011, replaced a "bad word" with [deleted] to comply with renewed restrictions on language.

Edit: 6 Novembre 2011, replaced a "bad word" with [deleted] to comply with renewed restrictions on language.

Edit: 6 Novembre 2011, replaced a "bad word" with [deleted] to comply with renewed restrictions on language.

[Casper]

Firstly, what a enjoyable post. I love your sense of humor (if that's what it is).

You present two options at the pool. That Owen requests that Abby take him with her, and that Abby requests that he go with him. I think the latter is quite unlikely as it is blatantly inconsistent with all other interactions they have together.

As for what Abby looks like when he gazes at her? Occam's Razor would suggest that Abby goes into ugly form when experiencing bloodlust. The three times we see her like this, her actions revolve solely around a profound hunger (bloodlust). (tunnel, basement, and Virginia). We also see Virginia like this (strange eyes and large wort-like lumps on her face) only when she too is concerned solely on acquiring food, albeit from her own arm. In the pool, Abby's actions do NOT revolve around food, but around anger and protecting Owen. Under the assumptions that Abby has only two forms, I would be willing to bet that she was in normal 12 year old girl form. But that's just my opinion.

As to whether Abby goes into ugly form when performing acts she would otherwise not be able to perform as a normal 12 year old girl, the movie gives us no clues accept for feeding on Thomas at the hospital. We would have to turn to the book for this, if we are even willing to refer to the book for this movie. In the book, Eli performs quite a few of these acts in human form. The one's that come to mind at this moment: 1. When she flings the door open at her first meeting with Oskar. 2. when she runs extremely fast from the burning woman's house (though, in my recollection, this is vaguely implied at best). 3. Eli can feed (and Abby can as well) without being ugly. (Hakan in window, and Tommy in basement with razor).

[a_contemplative_life]

Sorry, but after reading Sauvin's latest, my irreverent side just popped up with a movie quote...Bryant, from Blade Runner, explaining "Pris" (Darryl Hannah's character/android) to Deckard: "Talk about beauty and the beast . . . she's both."

Sorry, guys. Like Sauvin sez, the mind works in mysterious ways.