Assisted Living: A Novel (3 page)

Grandpa trembled with the effort his story was taking … The woods brooded over his dark saga, the eternal struggle between evil and good.

—One word, the foulest word there ever was, began to make the rounds: Cunt … they had cunts, people said, like little furry animals, smoother and softer than anuses, not as heathenishly narrow … All who tried it were sold … Amfooorrrtasss!!! That’s what it was, all right, the Wound, the gaping, bloody, festering sore that wouldn’t close … They used cunts to take Norrland from us! Eyes full of bittersweet treachery, tongues agile as squirrels … Unlucky love walked among us, burning and pillaging … The bitter fate of Enkidu! They croaked in our arms, begging forgiveness for their desertion … The whores closed in on us, they were merciless … just snuck into our rooms at night and started gobbling … the vampires … coaxing ever-more perverted, bewitched cavaliers into their entourage … not to mention their wagonloads of brats! their knickknacks and householdparaphernalia! … They got off on cheapthrills and expensivegifts … had lowtastes and shrilltongues … daughters of Lilith and Circe … O Tertullian! o Juvenal! Jean de Meun! the godly Earl of Rochester! They made it to Fraukälen … Mensträsk … we prepared for the last battle … drugged ourselves with soma … They broke through our defenses … Gumboda! … Kankberg! … they rushed over us! We fought toothandnail, spit in deaths face … did all that was manly possible … raged in silence … we were like grandpa beasties protecting our young against devils and trolls! The best of us fell, bleeding from a thousand and one mortal wounds! we didn’t call retreat in time! better to be a stuckhog than a lapdog! There was a hundred of them for every one of us! they were like lemmings! Modern men with realjobs and soundminds! fawning, prudish, lecherous cunts! They kept on pushing and pushing, like they were floating logs! Vercellae and Camerone! Maldon and Roncevaux! Culloden and Liegnitz! Poltava and Stalingrad … We marched against them from the endless, godforsaken forests … We had axes, broadswords, and spears … we knew how to use them … The ground shuddered when it drank our Aryan blood … We fought like Teja, chanted laments like Gelimer! We fell with Aryanogrecocks pointing straight towards heaven, took twenty enemies for every one of us, but they just kept on coming … Animals came to our aid, but Mausers took them down … Giantbears, arcticwolves, sabertoothtigers, mutantrabbits … We protected our grandsons with all we had, no one would touch them while there was still breath in our lungs! They slaughtered us by the thousands! mutilations and outrages! bloodyshame and meatyshivers! they were sly as Phoenicians! horny as Etruscans! merciless as Israelites! They brainwashed wounded prisoners of war and little boys alike! Taught them to love pussy! and everything else that makes life a living hell! Work! Sobriety! God and church! Law and order! King and country! Offices and factories! Clerks and critics! Bureaucracies and marketeconomies! Majorities and institutions! Parliamentarism and massmedia! Intellectuals and popularopinion! Legibility and literacy! Slave mentality! Slave morality! Creditors! By God! If only they’d killed us! spared us the sight of warriors turning into pigs! Down and Piltdown! After the invasion of the caitiffs and shrews life became what it is now … predictable … mundane … soulless … where your only thanks is a fist in the gut and shame is your only reward … They killed fantasy, honor, and ecstasy … Grubbs and mildew took the cow pastures and crops … The Colorado beetle and the Spanish slug did it for the potatoes and other vegetables … They domesticated animals … began to slaughter them … A few of us got away … refused to be tamed … planned our revenge … the last splinters of a shattered nobility … Like Miltons demons … and I am Satan himself … Accusing mankind before God … We make our home in the hidden places … as close to death as possible … outside of reality … the beastmen of deserted farmhouses … backwater marauders … hoochplied wolfhounds … depopulation’s wackjobs … Our time has come … let the battle cry sound … the lycanthropic revolt can begin …

Grandpa fell quiet, kissed me hard on the mouth, put me down, and stood up.

—Its getting colder, he said, gathering up his heatingpad and trudging on.

The ravens launched themselves heavily, silently, into the air. I followed after, and it was like I was walking through a mist … into that darkness, silence, cold and loneliness …

This is where we come from, that is where were going, so we might as well start breaking ourselves of the habit of living …

__________

Нuldra
—an elusive forest nymph in Scandanavian folklore

zingaros
—gypsies

urnings
—homosexuals

bedlamites
—madmen

navvies
—day laborers

Claqueurs
—hired clappers

quislings
—traitors to ones’ country

lotitos
—Michel Lotito, the famous metal-eater

wankhers
,
dirdirs
, and
pnumes
—see Jack Vance

haruchai
,
skest
, and
jheherrin
—see Stephen R. Donaldson

coalbiter
—idle youth

bunco
—fraud

barghests
—legendary, giant black dog with huge teeth and claws found in the north of England, particularly around Yorkshire

abhumanist
—see Jacques Audiberti

kurucarriers
—kuru, also known as “laughing sickness,” is a neurological disease made famous by an epidemic that broke out in Papua New Guinea in the mid-twentieth century; the disorder is believed to have been spread by endocannibalism, or the eating of the dead of one’s own tribe

Helusians
,
Oxioners
, and
Finlanders
—Helusians and Oxioners are the tribes that Tacitus found “beyond existence,” where the known world ended; they “have heads and faces of men, but the remainder of the body is a wild animal.” As sharp-featured Cornelius concludes: “quod ego ut incompertum in medio relinquam” inkslinger—tattoo artist cockmaker—maker of bridges or pallets for watches and clocks Teja—Last of the Ostrogoth kings in Itay, led the desparate fight against the Byzantine army in the years 552–553.

Gelimer
—last king of the Vandals

—As long as you can make others suffer, there’s no reason to throw in the towel, Grandpa exclaimed jovially.

He sat in a rocking chair sewing on a Confederate flag.
Ein Heldenleben
was playing in the background and Larri Isokyrpä and Torsten Murkström were just saying thanks for the coffee-kind of ironic, since Grandpa had mixed strychnine into it and it was just now starting to work. You have to find something to do, you know, when things get slow. Anyway, Larri lived a while longer, looked me in the eye, tossed his head, kicked a bit, but it didn’t help. That guy was a loudmouthed jerk who’d rearrange the face of any kid he could catch, making their two nostrils into one. And now they lay there, blueberryblue about the lips, and Grandpa put aside his handiwork and came up to them.

—We are here today to mourn my two dearest friends, who’ve up and left us with raging hardons … Lets start with Torsten, he said, kicking the corpse hard in the ear … Torsten Murkström signed off at the unrespectable age of sixty-nine …

Grandpa folded his hands in mock solemnity, he was wearing a pink nightshirt and fuzzyblack poodleslippers.

—His arrival into the world was a nasty surprise to his parents. His family scraped a living by making scenes in public … Torsten was known early on for his slowwit and charmingservility. At a young age, he’d already learned to fart on the sly and smoke ciggibutts …

Grandpa struggled to keep his face serious.

—He spent his whole life trolling the cabins of charcoalburners and logfloaters, trying his best to satisfy them all … He’d suck cock for a spoonful of fishentrails and an oldfashioned spanking … It was his life’s calling to make a bad situation worse. He sowed oats and reaped sourmash … He enjoyed strumming on his kantele and sipping motyl … When he was stripped of his commission in the Cock and Cassock Society, he got old real quick … he had a habit of sitting with his head in the oven … he finally worked up the courage to ask Tellemar: How the hell do you do it? … he looked for the answer in the Siikavaara Bible … in vain … Torsten never married, but remained faithful his whole life to Upper Kågedalen … His chief mourner is a walkingstick … Torsten wants his headstone to read: “Thanks for nothing” …

Torsten was laying on his stomach on the tiles. Grandpa grabbed his head and twisted it so hard his neck broke.

—Look at me when I’m talking about you!

Then he turned to Larri.

—Dowser Larri Isokyrpä was finally allowed to peterout after a long and weary struggle with that terminalillness we call life … Larri was squeezed out of his Grandma’s womb under an uprootedtree in Myskträsk … He was the first in a long line of stillbornsiblings and he learned selfsufficiency early on … A procession of oddjobs and shortgigs passed him by … He was a THX-doctor, a Quaker, a rathawker, a puppywhipper, a snowman’s trunk … He married Ms. Glädis Noppa … and later on the nationally celebrated onanist Hardy Honkala from Gråliden … Frau Hardy kicked it at fifty-three … Life was often like a Rubik’s cube … Nonetheless, this remarkable man somehow found the strength to teach himself dipsomania! His vocabulary swelled to the tripledigits, he discovered words had more than four letters, then came his big, fat chance: a temp job as an outhouse asswiper in Råslyet, a kilometer and a half south of Västbäck … Larri worked hard at his many highly desirable jobs until his body finally failed him … he devoted his last seventeen years to outliving his children … He was a lifetime Jagoda’s Witness … His interests were many, but to name a few: stroke, pogroms, the lambethwalk, kiddie’s diddles, Siberianroulette and
Hylands hörna
 … As a society member, he was unparalleled … his courses in bedwetting and gangrape were especially popular … The burial will take place under chaotic conditions … Donations can be made to the Dirty Geezer Fund …

Grandpa grabbed me by the neck and cackled Grandpalike at his own creativity.

—You know what we’re going to do now, child of mine?

—O no!

—First I’m going to take a long, hot manbath … And you’re going to make me coffee. Then we’re going to go outside and get a little fresh air. Why don’t you take out the Iron Crown of Lombardy and my Ripper suit … Methinks I want to look nice today …

__________

Ein Heldenleben
—“A Hero’s Life,” tone poem by Richard Strauss
motyl
—expiremental mixture of petrol and alcohol used to power Swedish military vehicles during World War II

Tellemar
—Hasse, Swedish radio host of the show
Ringså spelar vi
(Call us, and we’ll play your tune) from 1969–1988.

Siikavaara Bible
—The Siikavaara sect, or Korpela movement, was started by Toivo Korpela in the 1920s

THX-doctor
—THX, or thymus extract, was a natural remedy developed by the Swedish veterinarian Elix Sandberg; he claimed that THX could help with immune disorders and could even fight cancer

Hylands hörna
—“Hylands Corner,” a popular Swedish TV program that ran from 1962–1983

Iron Crown of Lombardy
—crown worn by Lombard rulers

Ripper suit
—hunting clothes

—“Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses” … Ho there, boy, Grandpa winked bawdily and dunked a sweetroll in his ginger-beer. Looks like we need to hop down to Egypt to troll for some real cock. Around here there’s hardly enough to live on.

The old Grandpaclock rumblewaggled eight.

—Ezekiel’s lips were uncircumcised. His mamma worked at Goethe’s Pipe and Peg in Jörn. She was a godpardoned, slipperycunt who’d howl so you could hear it over all of Kvarken when she got some deaddrunkcock stuck up in her rosette … Ezekiel and I were the same age, but he only smoked filtered. In my wildest dreams, I never thought he’d end up in the Good Old Shilly-Shally Book.

Grandpa threw his Bible aside, lit an Alte Reiter, and opened the newspaper.

—Sträng and Helén are engaged … Archbishop Värkström and Ulf Ekman broke up … An oldboy in Risböle pissed himself in the chapel … intestinalvilli are wreaking havoc in daycarecenters throughout lower Skelleftecounty … Wilt the Stilt Chamberlain, the basketnigger, has fucked twenty-thousand loose cunts …

He took a nip of insulin, licked his fingers, and blattered on.

—Five hundred and fifty liposuctionsurgeons discharged in Pite … the fourteen-queerold Kicki throatfucked by rimthurs … bald, logomanic demon terrifies Uppsala with blasphemies …

He fell silent, blanched, swore.

—Cottoneyedjoes and festeringnewborns!

I hardbraked in the middle of dunking a fibroidtumor in witch’s milk and waited for more. Grandpa glanced up with an expression that reminded me of a buzzard poised over a mouse.

—They’ve got Jeffrey, he whispered.

Then Grandpa told me all about Jeffrey Dahmer, who had drugged, fucked, and killed blackhomos in some place called Milwokey. Apparently, he’d called and asked for Grandpa’s advice before starting the whole dirty business. Grandpa told me he’d expected a lot from him, because he had grit. A few days went by, and then we heard Nikolaj Dzjumagalijev, the womangobbling funster from Alma Ata, was going away. And when Donald Leroy Evans, who had sixteen-or-so juicy murders to his name, got nabbed, it was like Grandpa had been sent eastward out of paradise. For three whole days and nights all he did was sing the praises of massmurderers everywhere. He seemed to know most of them personally. He was smackdab in the middle of a sentimental harangue down memorylane, something about Kuno Hofmann, the “Vampire of Nuremberg,” when he began coughing blood. I helped him lay down on our pegsofa’s brightred cushions. Then, my arms around my Grandpa, I was out in a flash. Seventy-five hours among A-list murderers really does you in.

__________

rimthurs
— in Nordic mythology, rimthurs, or Hrimthurs (“rime giants” or “frost giants”) live in Niflheim, the land of eternal ice

logomanic
—logomania, diarrhea of the mouth

witch’s milk
—secreted from the breasts of newborn babies, both male and female