Assisted Living: A Novel (19 page)

Grandpa and I were on our way to Stålberget to burn Siegfried Israel—sson to death in his house, and were following the animal trail countless generations of alcoholics had beaten through the brush. On our way, we passed through a jumble of stones dotted with gnarled pines. A goshawk was riding the barebreasted sky. At a bend in the path, we stumbled on an angry fortysomething in a redcheckered shirt and carpenters pants. Flushed and enraged, he was uncombed and unshaved. He’d been laying in wait. When he saw us, he whipped his pants off. He grabbed Grandpa, who was shedding his skin just then, not a pretty sight, let me tell you, and bent him double.

—Let’s see your liceridden ass, you old fogy.

I drew my Lapp knife and got ready for some hand-to-hand combat, but Grandpa shrieked like a stonewalled stockbroker: “Stay back, boy! this doesn’t concern you!” I obeyed and backed off a few meters. Still, I couldn’t look away. The guy had a huge, unabashadly magnificent cock. He went down on his knees and pushed in until he was up to his balls in my Grandpas ass.

—You give me any apeshit and I’ll fistfuck you with my rough lumberjackglove!

Grandpa had to grab a pineroot with both hands to help him take the rawfuck coming his way. He opened and shut his eyes, lewdly rotated his hips. But the big laborer wasn’t into that kind of nonsense. He grabbed Grandpa’s hips hard, forced him to hold still, and impaled him again and again with his furious, explosive cock. It was a good plan … Draw back and shoot forward, retreat and attack … Like Mundelföri twirling his firewhisk in chaos … Grandpas hornjuices squished, he blathered and yodeled … You could hear it for miles …

—Maaaooo … mu-hu, mu-hu, maaah … awwa-aw-wa-awwaaa … Jesus … Jesus … JEEESUSS! A-a-a-aaa! Yeeesss! more! Oh yeaaaahhh! Take me as I am! Straight up! Hole in one! Aah-Hilding-uhh-Hilding-mmh-Hilding! Oohgooood … you’re so hard … you’re so big … you’re so far in … I can feel it all the way to my heart … Goooddd! Fucking Satan, damned to hell!

Grandpa began to cry it was so good.

—Buuuaaaa! I love your nasty cock! Waaahhh! its so raw! Boo-hooo! fuck the shit out of me!

The guy was rough and violent, just like Grandpa liked them. He rode the expresstrain for about an hour, pushing and shoving, grinding his teeth and changing his grip and position. He beat Grandpa bloody with his clenched fists and called him everything you call your bosomfriends. For his part, Grandpa called on heaven and hell. He shrieked himself hoarse in the process. By the time it was all over, lust had done him in. The guy came silently and resolutely, pulled up his pants, kicked Grandpa in the tailbone and chin, and marched off. I made my way up to my Grandpa, dressed him, and gave him something to drink.

—Did you know him?

—I don’t know his name … never asked … met him three four times … always angry as hell … but he fucks like a god …

Grandpa was too beaten, bruised, and stiff to continue on … Homeburning would have to wait for another day … I stole a David Brown tractor and we drove home. That evening in bed, before we abandoned ourselves to our nightmares, Grandpa said: Love’s a curse … a toil and a trouble, a fence and a farce …

—Is there love other than the cockkind?

—Oh sure … But the animalmagnetism between cock and ass, or cock and mouth, or, Jewgodforbid, cock and cunt usually gets in the way. Trust me, boy, evil always triumphs … Even though sometimes you wish it could be like in
The Amorous Adventures of Prince Mony Vibescu
and those other classic fairytales … A love pure and true … short and sweet … soft and warm …

—Ethereal … seraphic … comic …

—You don’t know what you’re saying … you’re all tuckered out … Go to sleep before we quarrel … Nightynight, snoopydoo …

—Nightynight, Grandpa …

__________

Mundelföri
—a jotun (giant) in Norse mythology; in von Werth’s Aryan cosmology, he whisked the universe into being out of chaos

The Amorous Adventures of Prince Mony Vibescu
—aka Les Onze Milles Vegres, by Guillaume Apollinaire.

—Paul Holm lives here, boy, Grandpa wheezed, sinking down onto a rotten ovarianshaped stump.

—I need a smoke, he panted, completely out of breath.

In front of us a house and a barn were falling into each others arms like Latter Day Saints on Sunday. Tangles of weeds dug their claws into the dying homestead, which was afflicted by oldboyscurvy and gayrot. It was the stuffiest buggersummer ever, and the town of Lillkågetrask quivered like sourpork in the heatwave. The people around there are nothing but slobs and slatterns, happy—when it comes to the lice in their tangles—to live and let live. Most are fat and blue, not too good at standing on their own two feet, but great at creeping around on all fours. The forest around here is spindly and sparse: driedout old pines, toppled trees, a few stumps. You can’t see far, either; it’s like everything is obscured by a mist or haze.

—Gabriel’s fireygold, cuntsmelling piss! Grandpa swore, letting his reptilian eyes roam over the pockmarked swamp dotted with cowpatties and placentas, covered with branches and shrubs, tur-nipbeetfields and peatcrofts.

The neighborhood in general was the graybrown of an old gypsy-cock, but around Paul Holm’s barnhouse a riot of color was in full swing. In Lillkågeträsk, most of the soil consists of cigarette ash; the only things worth growing there are assbiters and buggerleeks. Around Paul’s home, though, abominations flourished in the fermenting mould, the thriving afterlife of shit and cadavers. Grandpa hawked a loogie and swallowed his ciggibutt.

—Hishiryoconsciousness is something you only reach when someone fucks the shit out of your compostculvert, he said and straightened his emaciated carcass. I never thought I’d have the strength … It sure ain’t like the old days, when you sprang like triggerhappy fool with a portablehuntingblind between church-villages, just to see if anything was going down!

He brushed the maggots from his shoulders. The severe black suit he wore contrasted nicely with his vampiric complexion and those pale blue eyes.

—But fuck my tender asshole, it doesn’t help to plead with Jesus! Oh well, let’s go brownnose old Paul! he said and staggered to his feet. By the way, you’d better be a nice and polite boy when we meet Paul, he warned, as he pushed his way through the pigweed and scabroustissue toward the farmyard. Paul is harder on kids and animals than anyone I know, he continued and came to a sudden halt. By Satan, what happened to you? Did you see the spermcovered face of God or what?! he exclaimed, eyeing a tortured bogbody wearing a toecap. It’s clear as a sneeze in church that Paul has been at this one, he said, poking the broken shitcarcass with his stilettocane. I think Paul is a Jew, he said and blinked, sickened, before heading toward the Holm house.

Grandpa had to use his cane to clear a path, since the going wasn’t exactly easy. Down off the hill, it was easy to forget where you were. Everything was bigger than it should have been. Gargantuan leeks and fireweed eight times the height of a man. Ferns as big as back in the days of the dinosaurs. The mosquitoes were especially hard on me. I bled from eleven thousand wounds.

—Bromberg’s Bloody Sunday! this is nothing! Back in my day there were winged insects with only one thing on their mind: putting out decent people’s eyes! Everyone suffered! Ninety-five percent were blind!

A brusque shove.

—Watch it there, teddybear.

He suddenly lashed out with his cane and carved out a flesheating, cocksucking orchid’s gallyellow, naughtyboy snout. Kidney-colored sludge gushed out. Others, their smiles mocking all that breathed, were greedily closing in, swaying forward on thick, hairy stems. They smelled hot and bitter. Finally, though, we managed to fight our way out. Hopping over a feebly trickling stream, we found ourselves in the farmyard. The land here sloped down to a lake. On closer examination, it was obvious this place used to be a respectable Västerbotten farm house … But not anymore. Now everything was a confusion of tangledcreepers, mostly ayahuascas. Nestlesnarls wrapped themselves lasciviously around drainpipes, squirtingcucumbers looked for a mug to cum on, stinkhorns revelled in their sunripened, carrionfed bloat. The remains of beasts killed by suicide and emergencyslaughter both were scattered everywhere. It was a crawlingwanker’s paradise.

—Are you still daring enough for the riddle of the sphincter? Grandpa asked.

—When I’m with you, Grandpa, I’m not scared.

—Now you sound like something out of
The Brothers Tigerheart
, mite … Let’s pretend we’re Gog and Magog on our way to a smoking hot prayermeeting …

It seemed Paul was a gospelsectarian. The fields were victims of neglect. A rusty castrationdevice lay askew in a pansybed, and an old Massey Ferguson buzzed with anger about forgotten to-dos and unfinished tasks. Judas’s ears, Wandering Jews, and kohlrabi grew around the entrance to the farmyard. A surly badger was roughfucking a young waitress who, blissfully whimpering, was bent double over a fence. Ruffs clucked lapwings burred, an elk sampled a poison saltlick and went bellyup. A Gabriel in a gray coat landed on Grandpa, ladybugs mobbed dungbeatles, and a raffsetgrasssnake hauled ass after a mouse running on fumes. It was Eden and Gomorra, baby, and the heavens themselves blushed at what was going down. But mammals were the minority lifeform here. Mourningdoaks and death’s head moths darted between clusters of smoke-, butter-, and cartilageballs swaying in a musty breeze. Mouldspattered narcobuggers hissed from a thorny refuge of Satanstickbrush. Scurvyherbs, ringwormeuphorbia, and ileusranunculus shook spastically, burly burntorchids and swarthly wolf’s bane rustled their leaves, vericellazosters and oxeyecervicalcollardaisies were about to pass out. Runners and creepers, shooters and sprouters, buds and bloomers! Seeds and spores, pericarps and shrubs, flowers and fronds! Phallos vulgaris, vagina spurius, anus murinus! Smoking-and explodingvines held court, nightlurkers and aeaeaeberries beckoned with poisonous fruit. Devil’s weed flourished among poisonnettles, green and white lovage struggled with ruddy witch’s herb. Goldbrown birdsfoottrefoil, purpleshavingbrushes, darkblue madwort! Confused rattails were in danger of a Ruskie ambush! Dog tongues panted over hot red tufts of burninglove! Virgin Marys rubbed shoulders with bastardalkanets and lessertwayblades. Rosynorns and fiery-gold tigerlilies stood out against black slack-and slitstars. Scrapironpiles had given up jammering for attention. A big calf gave its last kick. I was glad to be allowed to exist.

Grandpa took over.

—I bet your bleedingbrain that Paul is in the barn getting himself a raw beastfuck, he said.

He started off again, his shadow proceeding him, and soon he reached the dry farmwell. He bent over the tile rim and saw some emaciated toddlers clamoring for something to drink.

—Well, I’ll be damned, he chuckled, whipping out his sweaty balls and pissing on them.

He shook the last drops of piss onto me and slipped his cock back into its holster. We started on the path to the barn, which towered before us like a windowless sepulchre. Bumblebees and wasps burned and stung us, but I taught them to show a little respect. Grandpa always had a cloud of flies buzzing around him, no matter the weather or season. But now all I could see was a black whirlwind; I couldn’t even hear what he was saying. Paul had doused the area around the cowbarn’s door with Agent Orange. It was also mined, and Grandpa buzzed and whirred. So I crept through the mess of tendrils along the ancient concretewall, which blocked off all light and air.

Finally, I discovered a huge rathole behind a bunch of dandelions; it was so big I was able to fit inside. I found Grandpa, but the flies were so insane I had to drag him by the belt.

I crept forward and Grandpa came after, his nails digging into my cheeks to make sure we didn’t lose each other. The barn was as black as the soul of a knockedup woman and the gases made Grandpa want to hurl. We waded without seeing much through a lake of sewersludge; the shit was up to my crotch; finally, we found a ladder fastened to the wall and climbed up. Then we made our way along the rafters. Grandpa’s flies fell away one by one. When our eyes had finally adjusted to the dark, we realized we were in a labyrinth. Mutatedcows with whorefaces made their way through the sludge, humming hohum hits. From the stalls off to the side we could hear angry bassvoiced livestock bellowing their two cents worth in a neverending quarrel over Talmudic slaugh-territuals. Musk oxen clamored for the right to die, glowworms burned their little hearts out, and a colony of surrogatemother- smothers wrapped themselves in rosy cocoons. In one stall we could see a godfearing, Protestant ram wearing a straightjacket, and in the stall next to it a sow in a harness took the virginity of a crucified, dazzlingly white bull.

—Sri and sa-bdag, Grandpa said, we’ve entered the holy of holies … Eleusis for sure …

He gave my cheek a gruff stroke, chuckled and then crept on. Apparently, one had to be agile here.

—It’s not worth thinking and feeling down here, bolardwarf, “here time becomes space”!

On the whole, though, I didn’t feel much like Parsifal, and I certainly never pictured Grandpa as a Gurnemanz. More like a Klingsor. But something strange was definitely going on. From the outside the barn hadn’t seemed so huge, but from the inside it felt neverending. We were in a hallucination, an illusion. It felt likethe beams were taking us farther and farther into a dream, and there was always something worse waiting ahead. A smokebelching pit gaped beneath me; you could see black flames dancing far, far below. It was surrounded by a wall that kept back the sludge. Grandpa crawled up beside me. I thought he wanted to make love, so I tried to kiss him. But he gripped my neck hard and pushed me down against the beam.

—Satan’s balls, he croaked, calm down, horndog, or I’ll throw you head-over-heels into the netherworld!

Then Grandpa pressed his lips to my right eye.

—This, he whispered excitedly, this is one of the seven pits of hell found on that miserable dirtball we call Earth. It’s the abode of He Who Has No Eyes, he who calls decent folk home when they’re too old and sick to cum anymore … Down there no day is ever wasted and the fountains run a hundredproof. Animals are tame, they hop into the pot of their own free will. Everyone dines on stewedadvertisingexecutives and policechieffillets … You can babble all you want and everyone tries hard to please you. The words never give out, they never get battered and threadbare. Everything’s always orderly, no shab or drab anywhere … There’s never any reason to be despondent or depressed … you can sample hallucinogens from far away galaxies … All the bossboys are down there, from Heraclitus to Cioran, but they give you the respect you deserve … If you want, you can torture angels … You always know exactly what to do with yourself … You’re always giving tit for tat and they let everything slide … You’re always right, you’re held in high esteem … An innocent person dies for every word you speak … You get to play poker for entire galaxies … interrogate all knownlifeforms … subvert evolution … In Hell everyone is given a cock tough as leather and hard as Krupp steel … longer and rougher than the nastiest IdiAmincock! Your balls are always ready to burst and your asshole is as wet as a salivating confirmationpussy! You can have as many fuckbuddies as you want and they always pack it in as best they can! They look like Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, and Adolf Valentino rolled into one! They give head like sucklingpiglets on crack and their assholes are so narrow they screech when you ram them! When they fuck you in the ass, it’s so good you see fireworks! you hear the delicious sound of Jewbacon frying! But there’s one thing you should know, oy, and it’s this: skirtchasers end up somewhere else! they’re damned to gospelheaven and they’re forced to suck syphilic cunt for an eternity’s eternity!

Grandpa let me go, suddenly terrified.

—There’s evil in here, boy, I know it in my shrinking bowls! We have to find Paul and get away from here before some demonbastard finds us first.

Grandpa tried to move along the rafters like a sloth.

—This way is faster, easy as a thumb up the ass, he said, voice strained, before he let go and landed on his back in the viscous cowplop.

I dropped after, since the shit was only up to my knees.

—How’s it going, durchleuchtigste? I asked and licked his johnson clean.

—Whoredevil, he snorted and laboriously got his skinny legs beneath him, don’t bother faking it. It’s like intelligence. An old geezer has got a certain something that tells him when someone else is being a smartass. He shuffled off through the mess andkicked up a shrieking thalidomideboy, who he then ground to a pulp beneath his commandoboots.

—If we’ve learned anything, analnutjob, it’s to give them hell. But now I’m going to call to Paul. Something else might hear and come to suck our cockblood dry, of course, but that’s a risk we’ll just have to take.

Grandpa used his nicest voice.

—Oh Paul! Paul, it’s me! Here to tell you that Grandpa from Hebberschhåle hasn’t forgotten you! We had the same headmaster, don’t you remember?

It was silent as God’s conscience.

—Were lost in space and have some goodygoods for you! Grandpa lied.

Something came hurtling out of a corner, but it wasn’t Paul. A shitfaced bitch stumbled clumsily up to Grandpa and embraced him. She was bald and blind and had snapping cunts over her whole flabby body. Hydrocholoricacid dripped from every whore-hole. She was dead, but wouldn’t admit it. Her hornjuices were stickier than life itself.

—Mammaa-a! Grandpa squealed and shimmied like an epileptic. He tossed his head and ground his hips, but she only clung harder and reached for the fearstiffened, cerisehued salami sticking out of its flannelholster.

I knew I had to do something then and there; if I didn’t, my Grandpa would be lost. I found a crossbar and tried to pry the thing loose, but it was stuck tight as a chastitycork in a baby’s ass. The cuntlady had got her hand around Grandpa’s bacon and was licking her chops, trying to decide which hole was the hungriest. Meanwhile, Grandpa was clutching his heart and watching his checkered life flash before his eyes like an ultraviolent pornobio. I pried the crossbar loose just as the oldbag was about to stuff Grandpa’s junk into an especially rude-and-crude hole right above her navel. I swung and drove the crossbar straight into the back of the whorebeast’s head, so that the two six inch spikes sank deep into her brain. She hissed, loosened her grip, and I was able to pull Grandpa free. She swayed and collapsed and we splashed away through the barn’s innermoat. There were at least four different directions to choose from, though, and we were lost in no time. Grandpa’s asbestic lungs were whimpe ng like scalded lemmings, and finally he slipped, arms waving wildly, on some cuddlehungry spermgobbler.