Nikanor Teratologen - Assisted Living - A Novel

— Were vegetarians now, Signar said. We only eat fallenfruit and animals who died from natural causes …

— How do we know a mans soul goes up to heaven, but an animal’s goes down to the earth? Myrtle asked cryptically.

— That from the Salter?

— Nah, the Preacher … We love all living things here … especially the AIDS virus …

The kitchen was warm and cozy, you had to give them that. It was papered with obituaries from North Västerbotten. They had an ironrange and an electrichotplate, just in case. On the win-dowledge were the twelve apostles, a clay Gorgon with a candle, and half a dozen Mochica statuettess showing different acts of bestiality, most of them involving vicunas. There were handmade-bags and cornsacks everywhere. To the right of the refrigerator were a couple of pictures: Dog in Agony and a Flemish sketch of hobos on the gogo. To the left was a slightly retouched photograph of almost all the king’s family. There was a prayer on a nail above the sofa. Embroidered gold on red, it featured the familiar words from the Sermon on the Mount: “Suffer the little children to come unto me, so I can fuck the shit out of them.” Over the sink, where a grouse sat still in a bottle, Signar had taped a naked picture of Upper Kågedalens soccer team. They were pink, hairy, and fleshy. On the wall behind Myrtle were her parents’ mummified hands and a few nailriddled dolls; they looked like neighbors and friends who had suddenly become ill or died. Outside the window, a rough-hewn old man in a peaked cap struggled forward on a tricycle.

Something was wrong with him, he was missing both neck and eyes. Plenty of people are like that in Kusmark: obese and blind.

Grandpa didn’t say anything, so I edged on in. I tried to be pleasant, but I had too little confidence to be convincing.

— Soooo … uhhhh … how’s the harvest coming? I asked in an unnecessarily serious voice. Not because I really cared, but just for something to say …

— What’s that?

— How did the crops do?

— What the fuck are you babbling about?

— Farming!

— Do you know what pimpleface is saying?!

— How did your seeds do?

— Owwdjrseedsdo! mocked Signar. Thanks for asking, but our shoots and sprouts got all froze and drowned!

— We shouldn’t be like that, Myrtle said decisively. I’m not one of those … So how’s school going? she asked, just so I’d be at a loss for words.

— I don’t really go … I’m out sick at the moment …

— You’ll sure have to repeat a lot … Probably too much …

— So what’s your problem?! yelped Signar.

— Pretty much everything, I guess … my stomach … my head …

— You’re telling me! you look like you’re at death’s door!

— And me, I’m just your ordinary whiny rheumatic … so it’s not going great for me either, Myrtle sighed and dug a maggot out of her rotten nose. It’d been bitten off by a badger last fall and resewn.

Grandpa ignored us and kept on stirring in sugar.

— Grandpas gone beddybye …

— Headed for the hills …

Signar heaped a couple of tablespoons of snuff on a piece of bread and scratched a scar that ran from ear to ear. That was a souvenir from the time he and Grandpa had come to blows, long before I was even a gleam in the worlds eye. Grandpa had said that of the four stooges in the 120 Days of Sodom, he was most like the Due de Blangis, at least in character. Signar had insisted he was more like the Bishop or Curval.

— Curval s an old drunk, a filthy bag of bones with two inches of shitcrust around his immense assholecrater … Tat tvam asi ! Signar had shouted.

When Grandpa gets mad, he turns red, white, or blue, just like Torgeir Håvarsson: “For his heart wasn’t anything like a bird’s crop. It didn’t hold blood, it would never tremble in terror, since it had been hardened by the best smith on earth.” So Grandpa had hatched a plan. He’d plied Signar with porn and snuff. When the miscreant was finally out, Grandpa had jumped him in bed, slit his throat, and headed for Finland. But Signar wasn’t done for … He woke up in the morgue when someone fingered his anallobes. Since Signar was so short and he didn’t actually die, Grandpa only had to pay a sixteenth of a weregild: a half kilo of coffee and a packet of sugar …

— It was just a goddamn accident, he’d complained, and Signar had bided his time.

A couple of years later, Signar had jumped out of a draina-geditch and tried to shoot Grandpa. Good plan, except that the gun exploded and Signar lost a thumb and an eye. At that point, Grandpa declared them even. Signar wasn’t handsome, but he was a greedy little bugger and Grandpa wanted to keep him around. After all, you can fuck everything that shits …

— Have more, Myrtle urged, and I made it a point to praise the pretzelsticks and strong coffee.

— Is it just me or is this a little surreal? Signar asked.

— Nahhh … just a little strange, I said.

— Goddammit, you’ve gotta stop cioranizing! Think pussyteev! demanded Myrtle. Life’s a goddamned fine thing! Live modestly, talk honestly, you’ll be alright! Think of what a blessing it is to wake up every morning with a sob in your throat!

— I dreamed the strangest thing last night, Signar began. I sat beside the river of Babel and cried … I was thinking about Zion.

— Did you hang your harp on a willow tree?

— Yeah … how the fuck did you know that?

— I saw a man with clear eyes and another wearing a muzzle … They were shrewd as snakes and harmless as doves …

— Matthew ten sixteen …

— The cleareyed chap said his name was Aappo Kiimainen and the other one was Jyrki Muostalainen … Then he read from a big book called Finnish Bad Behavior from Mommilakalabaliken to Mainilaintermezzot … It was printed on babyskin … After that, he fucked me every which way … And while we were loving it up, he made me tell him my favorite sex fantasy …

— Which is …? I snooped.

— It’s not that one about being raped by miners, is it? cackled Myrtel, lighting a lazaretcigarette with Gandhi’s platinum lighter.

— Nah, I never had the guts to talk about this one before …

— Tell us now, because our warcouncil is over if Grandpa doesn’t come around soon!

Grandpa, however, showed no signs of returning to earth. He’d already emptied the sugar bowl. Now he sat with downcast eyes, stirring so thoughtfully that it echoed.

— So here’s my hottest, girliest fuckfantasy …

Signar blushed at his own daring.

— Lanz von Liebenfels’s Theosofy and the Assyrian Beastmen talks about a twobodied, fourarmed, fourlegged Hindu named Lalao … I’d like to fuck a freak like that … mercilessly … He’ll croon folk love ballads in a shrill, cracked voice while I’m pounding him … At the same time, he’ll fuck Bhagwan in the mouth, while the guru is being devoured by a Komodo dragon … When Bhagwan is all eaten up, Reagan will take his place … then Thatcher … Schwarzenegger, of course, will be pounding me from behind … it’ll be an honest-to-god Apachefuck! And I’ll look, and before my eyes I’ll see a thousand newborns carried away by condors, eaten up by wildpigs, drowned by barricudaswarms … Legions of godlygirls and pregnantwhores will be caught in lavaflows, quicksand sinks, and ratinfested bunkers … they’ll have to stroke themselves and talk dirty till their dying breath …

Myrtle was smoking and obviously enjoying herself, and I was listening like a wideeyed peeping tom. Grandpa was as lost to us as before.

— A cheeky old Soldier of Christ will lash my back and ass with a cat o’ nine tails … When I’m one bloody weepingwound, he’ll be decapitated and I’ll open my mouth and receive his last repentant shout while I kiss him deep, deep down in the gaping wound where the blood’s already starting to congeal … Cities will burn, hydrogen bombs will explode, cultures will go kaplooey … Tom Jones and Julio Iglesias will gnaw off each other’s cocks … “Plura” and Thåström will sliceanddice each other with chain saws … Me and Arnold will come … And an that very moment, the universe will explode …