Assisted Living: A Novel (21 page)

—Flush it down the toilet, he growled, foaming at the mouth. Before I could pull the handle, though, the wasted hunk of flesh was drawn into the labyrinthine sewers by a toothy maw that vanished into the seething whirlpool.

When I came out, Grandpa had already downed Paul’s testicles and had poured himself a Sevesogrogg.

—It’s probably safest if you don’t come any closer, you might get chloracne or something, he said goodnaturedly.

Then he examined Paul’s mangled remains and rubbed his blue and swollen knee.

—Horrible. Just horrible. How do you get to be like that?

Grandpa sighed like a rejected asskisser.

—Old Paul was stronger than he looked. And tough. But I got the best of him in the end. And now I’m going to fuck him.

He cut the elastic on Pauls shorts and teased out his joystick. Then he positioned himself awkwardly above the corpse and tried to work his lightlysmoked sausage into Pauls seasoned intestinalchamber.

—Dear Satan, but I need salve! he bawled and airfucked Pauls slack stomach. Then he dipped his girlygirl cock in Paul’s brain-matter and sprayed lovejuices all over Paul’s doxyhair.

—Halledoodane, he babbled softly as he milked out the last few drops.

Grandpa half-collapsed for a long moment and toyed with Paul’s eyeballs. His own eyes were half-closed, but he still studied me up and down.

—Fuck me, mite, life can be gruesome.

At that, he chugged a lug from his flask and zipped his fly.

—Time to get gone, he said. But first I need to change clothes and then, as God is my witness, were going fishing.

He ordered me to find some clean clothes. So I tripped out into the hallway and up the stairs to the bedroom. In the closet, I found two dubious hideshoes, a blouse with an underbodice, a racoonskincoat, a wifebeater, and a walruswrap. Over the arm of the chair next to the bed were two pairs of chaps.

A dead child was wrapped in the black velvet sheets. A tattooed lampshade stood on the bookheavy smokers table. In a grimy aquarium, two tapeworms twisted and writhed with bleatbreaking, and the black drapes that hid the walls were made of live bats sewn together. I took the clothes down into the kitchen and helped Grandpa into the wheelchair Paul had used for decoyhunting retirees. Grandpa was about a half meter taller than Paul, so the rags didn’t fit well. Still, since Grandpa was so skinny it worked inthe end. I got the wifebeater and a pair of the chaps and Grandpa chose a dandeliondecorated bonnet and a pair of boots he found in the dirtyclotheshamper.

—These are for you, boy. And don’t you look good!

I packed a boozebag with snacks while Grandpa wheeled himself to the indoor toolshed to have a look. I filled the bag with raw rolldough, stewed prurience, pukeshitbread, and Tuaregquenelle.

—Don’t forget the booze! Grandpa called, still rooting around in the closet.

I quickly filled a ten-liter can with syrup and phenol and then took a smokebreak astride a roughchair. The kitchen was no cozy place to be. Flies in droves sucked and licked their way across the floor. Palmsized lice performed pirouettes in Paul’s cluttered sink, troughs with workingman’s ribs and babypurée meant for the creepycrawlies reeked and bubbled. Above the sofa a teflon wallhanging caught my eye. “Vita brevis, ars longa” stood there, red on black, and underneath it the translation: “Life is short, the arse is long.” On the windowsill some wilted pigskinbegonias drooped in cracked pots, trying to shut bitter eyes against the abuse of the oncoming night.

—How about some help, fancypants! Grandpa ordered.

The entrance hall was darkly illuminated by the glow from Grandpa’s ciggi. He had a Kalashnikov, a flamethrower, and two-dozen nervegashandgrenades in his lap. He was also dragging a trough full of abortedfetuses and a hempsack with fishingequipment. I went out into the muddy yard to look for a wagon of some kind. I found a cobbled-together cart and a timid old ox to haul the stuff down to the pier.

—Well, suck the old geezers dong! Grandpa swore when he got to the door. Harry Kågström made that cart for the Party Convention in 1937. I recognize it by the swastikashaped spokes. It’ll get nasty if we don’t get out of here before the separatists make their evening rounds. Hurry and load up, you SRB-cunt!

With an effort I got the sack, trough, and Grandpa loaded onto the cart. I climbed up onto the runningboard. When I struck the ox on the flanks, it echoed dully. Bellowing, the umber beast began to pull us toward the overgrown path leading down to the swamp. Grandpa egged it on too, lashing out with his plumbbob until all the skin had been flayed off the ox’s frothing, bloody hindquarters. The beast lurched through tangled stands of flutteringelm, jaun-diceberry, and silverbirch, out onto a level marsh overrun with bogrosemary, sourdock, waxycrust, and a thriving coleopteranclub. There I took out first one of the beast’s hindlegs, then the other.

—What the fuck you doing, are you trying to kill me! Grandpa laughed madly and clicked his shithole to goad the ox on, who was bravely hauling itself forward on its two remaining legs.

Slowly we bumped along the last hundred meters to the beach, where brown waves gurgled against the sand. The vanishing shoreline hesitantly sketched itself against a mess of flat, washe-dout, roughlydrawn surfaces. Ramshackle hovels covered in Maoist graffiti squatted there dismally. The beast stopped and I helped Grandpa down. He limped painfully forward and took the ox by the horns.

—Make him hot, boy, and then hack off his slimy rawballs.

I lay on my side and began to suck. The beasts cock tasted like chervil. Just when the ox was so hard it thought it might have balls after all, I took out the cockshears I keep in my waistband in case a Jew ever touches me. The steer bawled and tossed Grandpa into the nearest boathouse. I deftly broke its front legs so it couldn’t escape. Silently, Grandpa staggered back toward the cart and took out a dull, rusty boxsaw. Then we placed ourselves on both sides of the beast and began sawing off its head.

—This is a tough job, Grandpa lifted his voice to drown out the ox after a few moments of hard cutting. It’s mostly cartilage, though, so he doesn’t feel anything.

Fifteen minutes later we were done. Grandpa sat on an abandoned earthcloset and lit a radioactiveciggi.

—Find a boat, load it up, and then well look for some bait.

I splashed my way through the nnre to the wharf. A horrible smell greeted me at the water’s edge, where a tangle of
Ulva intestinalis
and
Delasseria sanguinea
mixed it up with waterweeds and crabs. The lake looked like lumpy bouillon served on a quivering plate. Fertilizationcanals originating in Paul’s barnhouse branched out around the wharf, where two boats were moored. One was a dinghy made of resinsealed cardboard. The other was a skiff made from baobabwood. It had a blackpine keel and was shaped like a Finnish whitewaterraft. Small animals were living it up in the roomy sump. I undid the boatchain from the post and clumsily tipped myself in. Then I found a pole and tried to steer the boat back to land.

—Fuck, it isn’t working, Grandpa! I finally exclaimed in desperation.

Grandpa stubbed his ciggi out in the earthcloset, where trash-fish chattered greedily. Looking as calm and collected as a priest during delimitation, he pointed toward a promontory about a hundred and fifty meters west.

—Go there and calm down, waif, because by Satan’s tumorriden ass I don’t want to mess my clothes up!

Grandpa was obviously in a bad mood. He made his way down the beach with difficulty and I followed his directions and rowed west.

—Ruhollahs rough shanks, Paul must’ve been fucked in the head! Grandpa swore. A few years ago, all he did was send his shit down to Lillträsket. That’s a lagoon about three hundred meters southeast from here, he explained irritably, stomping a young penduline tit to death and elbowing his way through creepers and clingers. The terrain became more passable and the fleshy ground played host to cocoplants, opiumpoppies, oralpoplars, groundcherries, and bluegums.

Then the land suddenly flatlined, although a stalk of grain showed every once in a while. Otherwise, it was just mud.

—This reminds me of the Tibetan legend about Lepra-Berit and Leatherface, Grandpa began and recycled an old story from Maldoror s greatest hits.

I think he was just looking for an excuse to rest. After ten minutes, he pulled himself up again with difficulty. He’d been sitting on a shipwrecked timecapsule, which held a multi-and ganglylimbed, minium-and-olive striped visitor from Earth’s near future. Grandpa gloomily examined the white and bloated sky, which looked like a dead fish’s belly. A flock of beangeese flew into the sun and burned like fallenangels. A waterspout that had started in the bottomless pits below Björnhusberget whisked the calm summer twilight. It had schlepped a rotten house all the way from Träskbacken, and was whirling it away toward Lidträsket. After it was gone, silence rolled over the defiled landscape, stifling the contradictory clamors from both propagationarea and offaldump under the coldweight of indifference. Grandpa carefully studied our darkening surroundings. Nothing really excited him, though, since he was already waiting on the darkest night of all. Still, his looks silenced mayflies and dragonflies in their frantic buzzing over reedclumps and garbagepiles. Becquerelcicadas and other players waited for a sign from Grandpa before starting up again. I wanted to burst into song or something, just to keep Grandpa from destroying the world. His eyes offered a challenge to chlorotics and skeptics alike. At the edge of my vision, I saw the shadowforms of fibromyalgic moose and Samsonfoxes with troll and dwarf kings riding their backs. Sprites were straddling dirty, fattened hogs; sexgorged pixies rode Persian lambs ripe for the slaughter; darkelves perched on twoheaded calves. The world awaited Grandpas judgment. With a thoughtful expression, he looked over his mangled realm, the sad remnants of his army. Vampires, werewolves, and demons had either found other sorcerers or had died terrible deaths at the hands of modern
Hetero patiens.
Pale as a birch, Grandpa continued to stare into the sinking suns last lascivious light. The petty gloom was still waiting on his answer. Perhaps all those creatures of the night could re-educate themselves in the fast-growing fields of computing, media, or finance? Grandpas stiff posture and imperator profile betrayed nothing of what he was thinking. Then he lifted his right arm. At first I thought he was going to perform a
Sieg Heil,
but instead his workshy hand gave a last mocking wave.

—Nightynight, snoopydoo, he sneered to the twilightcreatures, who existed by the suggestive power of his will alone.

The world knitted itself back together at the seams, and when I finally dared to look all I saw were the solid contours of familiar things. Grandpa was staring at me. If he could’ve sobbed, he would’ve done it.

—Now we can expect anything, lassie. The everyday world will get its claws into us sometime or other. When that happens, the jig is up. There’s no place for the likes of us there.

He walked the last thirty meters to a little pier made from beer-cans and sillyputty. I tied up the boat and jumped ashore.

—What do you think you’re doing? Shove off and get the fishinggear and all our other crap!

I was forced to make two trips. During that time, Grandpa stood alone at the berth. To calm himself down, he talked about the time we shot Palme. The trough and the can made for precarious going, but I managed to get everything onto the boat without its capsizing. Then I carried Grandpa out. Unfortunately, he slipped and fell when he stepped aboard. He crawled to the back, inventing new curses to hurl at me.

—By Ruth, I can’t believe we’re made from the same gristle and snot! The easiest task in the world, finding a seaworthy boat, is harder for you than getting Pelé to blow Muhammad Ali on live TV! using the pope as a bed to boot!

I knew it was useless to argue, so I jumped in and cast off. Moaning with the strain, I pushed us away from land, carving a path through toiletpapergarlands and barbedwirerolls. The water was like bloody diarrhea until we were a ways from shore. Then it was like peasoup shot through with splashes of quicksilver and strings of oil.

—Steer toward Storholmen! Grandpa barked. You know, it was out there that Terror-Nikanor hooked a Jewishly huge devilfish a handtrolley of years ago …

I sat down on the seat and began to row. The slender oars were made of psychomor wood and bit easily into the grainstrewn surface of the water.

—Boy, you’ve got less vim and vigor than Emil Zátopek when he won double gold at the Olympics in, what was it, forty-four? I was there with Rudolf Höss, Commander of Arschwitz, and the mood was all mob: thirty thousand Hasidic miraclerabbis roaring from the galleries of the amphibioustheater and just as many Checkers and Pollards. And there we were, fifteen reckless prettyboys from the SS’s PJ/SE-battalion.

Grandpa suddenly fell quiet, shhshd for good measure, and made the deafmute sign for “If you don’t stop now, I’ll give you an intestinalparasiteenema.” I braked with a splash of the oars and turned to see what had caught Grandpas attention. A few barkhouses, good for learning how to go numb, lurked around Storholmen. And in front of one cottage, a fatgeezer was fucking a littleshaver. We slowly glided toward the fireblackened shore, making for two burntout oxhuts.

—Stop, Grandpa! It’s not fun anymore! the youngster complained in a teartrembling voice.

The guy was standing with his back counterclockwise to us, but well within shotgun distance. He bit the kid on the neck and growled Fafner’s and Fasolt’s leitmotiv from
Das Rheingold.
His rheumatic loins moved like a piston, and his pockmarked hammer pounded straight into the little blond tyke’s plump babycheeks. He’d tossed the kid over the dryingrack where Bogomils used to dry priestdicks. This geezer’s cock, though, looked like it had been forged: rough, tough, and crooked, with a steelblue sheen and a rustred head. He drummed like he was young, a panting billows with a fattyheart, and scratched the screeching boy’s back bloody. The boy, however, squirmed like a frog on a spit; his shrieks were metallic and wordless now; dirtyblood poured from his defiled rump.