Nikanor Teratologen - Assisted Living - A Novel

— 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.

— Cry, cry, honeypie, the geezer muttered gutturally and lit a fatsocigar with his free hand.

At that, Grandpa pointed his Kalashnikov and yelled.

— Karl-Johan!

Without missing a beat, the old man glared back over his left shoulder. At the sight of Grandpa, different emotions ran a relay across his forgettable face. At first he seemed surprised, then spiteful, then cringing, and finally miserable.

— Be nice! he whimpered. Can’t you just wait a sec until I’ve done my thing!

— Pull your dick out now!

— Let me finish! Karl-Johan protested.

— Youheardwhatlsaid!

— Chill out, for fuck’s sake!

Grandpa fired. The volley hit him in the back and killed him instantly. He fell flat on his face, but managed to drive his cock in one last time. In a few strokes we’d reached land.

— Get the boy and cut the geezer’s right ear off! Grandpa ordered.

I sliced Karl-Johns ear off and dragged the brat toward the water. Then I stuck the kid in the back and shoved off.

— Karl-Johan was an idiot … he liked disposable Q-tips … he also used Daisy Midi, the adult diaper “for those who leak just a little more” … I had a few bones to pick with him, but nothing that’s worth rehashing now … Take us out to the reef by Tegeludden … Right at the dropoff where Ki Lu caught himself a Greenland shark. It was back when the summer of lovestories to end all lovestories was nearing its climax …

— Here?

— Nah, I changed my mind.

I rowed past Abborrudden toward Räften … After a while we reached a little islet. I dropped our rusty anchor, even though the water was mirrorsmooth. Then we rigged the net. Paul had a large tacklebox packed with wobblers, most of them magnum. I saw a waspcolored Swim Whizz, a silvergreen Cisco Kid, a rosy Heddon Tad Polly, a yellow-red Hellraiser, a darkly glittering Heimar Mene; the largest Rapalan was silver and black; the largest Hi-Lon was red and white; a flexible pikecolored Rebel, a bulging and bigspooned, perchcolored Rebel, and hundreds more … But Grandpa chose a dull old silver Kaleva. His rod was seven feet long and wicked stiff, crowned by an old crimson Ambassadeur. The line looked fresh, three hundred meters, 0.45mm. I had a limp little gasstation rod and an enclosedreel with no brake. A medium-sized Mörrum-troll was tangled in the worn line.

— Before we fish, let’s chew some peyote, Grandpa said, opening his leatherpouch. I got six and he took twelve.

The bitter nubs are gumnumbing and the tough fibers really challenge your jaws. We chewed and spit, blobs splotched where they landed … But nothing was different than before, the world was just as hard to make out … you sit on förtvivlans giffel, the croissant of despair … on your way to the Great Attractor in Centaurus … the two hundred billion brain cells you have before you drug yourself up still don’t know what darkmatter is … eventhough it makes up almost everything in the universe … making your way through life is hard, almost impossible … its best to do what Grandpa says … Right now he was casting with a practiced swing, swaying to the rhythm, real smooth … the line ran out … The dark was about to swallow us whole … night had come on quick … He reeled his line in … nothing bit … mist came off the cold water … everything was calm … Grandpa cast again and again … in all directions … toward the reedclumps … the openwater … into nothing … He let his lure sink and turned the handle in a spunky rhythm … I cast with what I had … there was hardly twenty-five meters of line … I reeled in as good as I could … suddenly I felt a bite … I pulled against it … tried to jiggle it up … fear gnawed at my so-called heart … I couldn’t see anything … the line was worn … it gave …

— Fuuuck!

— Why are you shouting, my unworthy lad?

— I had something …

— Got your hook stuck on the bottom …

— I don’t think so …

Grandpa grabbed his rod and came out swinging. The face of an absolute dictator … my reel jammed … Grandpa’s snarled … the rebound straightened it out …

— Now for some real action!

He emptied the trough of aborted fetuses … Skellefteås romantic trials and tribulations made tangible … the whole redish-black, rotten, slimy mess of them … the blackwater swallowed them all … Grandpa fastened the Kaleva by the scalp … tossed the open tacklebox into the water … everything was lost … most sunk straightaway …

— Even Fehmi Varli’s twenty-six-kilo pike wouldn’t do for bait in this sea! Now let’s show them what we can do …

Grandpa took Karl-Johan’s little fucktoy … he’d fainted … stuck the kid on a meathook and used five pieces of nylonrope for a line … then he swung him twenty meters out … used a Tupper-waretub as a float … now that’s honest-to-god tackle … I was in the process of putting the oxhead on an ironhook … but I didn’t have line enough to get it more than a meter from the boat … The summer night had clocked in … we sat and hoped … The sky darkened … puckered up its eyebrows … from somewhere we caught the scent of gravity … A sheer cliff fell straight into the water … we had to imagine the rest … nothing’s possible, but everything’s imaginable … Grandpa waited … everything was still … time passed out … we began to despair … Suddenly I saw something circling my bait … it took a nip … a bite … swallowed it whole … headed straight for the depths … Grandpa cackled … I fought it … it was strong … it wanted up … no quarter … Carolines versus Muscovites … it was yielding … I fought like an animal … it came to the surface … it was terrible … no one would believe us … we moved counterclockwise … it seethed and gurgled … churned and shrieked …

— It’s a demon! A devil!

Grandpa threw down his tackle and took up mine … he swore up one side and down the other … He saw more than I did … Resolutely cut the line while I stood and heavyheaved … sat back on his seat … took a grenade in each hand …