Nikanor Teratologen - Assisted Living - A Novel

— How old am I, Grandpa?

— Nine or ten, I guess …

Grandpa had dressed up in a darkgray suit with a starched shirt, loose collar, and a preknotted tie. I had on a knitted woolsweater, balloonpants, and gummyshoes.

— You’re a timesink, a milksop, you’re stupid and you suck like a girl! FYI, this is your last birthdoomsday … I can’t do it any longer! I can’t stand the sight of you!

Grandpa squirted Schick’s shavingcream onto the Styrofoam-cake. I decorated it with red marbles and pennies.

— There now, all finished …

— Soon it’ll all be over …

The time was pushing three and night was storming down. The powersthatbe had cheated the sky … the day wasn’t wortha plugged nickel. Cold and gray, a foretaste of times to come. Grumpweather.

— Are they going to show soon, Grandpa?

— Did you tell them three?

— Yeah,three …

— Probably on their way … cant imagine where else they’d be …

We sat down on foldingchairs and waited. Grandpa passed the time squishing the lice he’d grown tired of … He spared the artists among them. With trembling underlip, I checked an estrustimetable … We’d done ourselves proud, the kids would like it. We’d hung balloons, garlands, and wires. There was popcorn, pepper-mintcandy, and caramels. Paperplates, plasticcups, and cum — and barfbags too. AROM condoms, Absolut Citron, and blackcurrentschnapps. Amphetamine tablets, cannabismuffins, and burnt gingerbreadbiscuits.

— Can I ask you about a few words, Grandpa?

— Is there anything but words in that sick brain of yours?

— I want some more to play with … Just this once, Grandpa!

— Fine, what are the words?

— First I want to know what “solidarity” means.

— Well, solidarity can mean a shitload of things … injury for others … losing yourself in the herd … hating the next guy as much as yourself … But it actually means that some people are worth more than others … and they have the right to do whatever the fuck they want … To be like liliesofthevalley … to not give a shit, because nothing’s worth a shit anyway …

— What’s “stress”?

— Let me see: the Nibelungs had stressgut … the LO and SAF-bigwigs arrange a yearly stresshunt of sick retirees … Stress is Gods foremost quality …

— Who’s Oskar Ernst Bernhardt?

— The Messiah.

— Why doesn’t a creek get tired of flowing?

— All creeks are tired! Don’t you hear them sighing that all is vanity?

— What does kal-lukä mean?

— Killdeathkill.

— Why do we talk in dialect?

— Västerbottens dialect is the language Guido von List talks about in The Primal Language of the Aryo-Germans and their Mystery Language …

— Is there life after birth?

— No.

— Is there intelligentlife on Earth?

— No.

— Who was my daddy?

— Some Homo erectus …

— Was it Gazin or Aristov who wrote Doctor Chicago ?

— Neither … It was Kharlamov …

— Why shouldn’t you write?

— Writing is like pissing truisms into the Pleonastic Ocean … Though the Almighty Public, the misshapen crowd, has definitely earned a good pissing on …

— What’s the difference between Platonic and Aristotelian love?

— The difference is huge! Platonic loves means you can only jack each other off with two fingers while wearing rubbergloves … Aristotelian love means you can fuck armpits and kneehollows too …

— Why does it feel better when someone forces you to do it?

— Desire is hard to distinguish from nausea and suffering … pain, terror, and shame … Pleasure is knowing its not possible to go any further …

— Which is worse, a sobbinggrunt or a groaningwhine?

— Both are the same …

— What were Jesus’s last words on the cross?

—“My honor is loyalty,” according to the Synoptics. But the Gospel of Python claims he said: “Life’s a piece of shit, when you look at it!”

— Why are there so many people in the world?

— They’re practicedummies.

— Why do so few of them give a damn about us?

— I’ve wondered the same myself …

— What are we made of?

— 95 % hot air.

— Why are we here?

— To give each other hell … shame each other …

— What are we really?

— Cenobites.

— Why do we live in a grayzone, a nomansland, a waste?

— That was decided September 2nd, 1809 (or eighty years before my own personal calendar kicks in: when Nietzsche saw the light and Hitler issued forth into darkness), when Sandels and Kamensky drunk themselves blind at a buggerinn in Frostkåge and agreed to an armistice … Russia’s main base became Pite and rural Sweden’s became Ume. Ever since then, those of us who live in between must exist in a powervacuum, an interstellarvoid, the windblasted and lambasted waitingroom of a Veterinarian that only has one treatment and one syringe … Two weeks after the Frostkåge boozefest, we lost the faithful Suomi-cocks to the Russians. Norrbotten was separated from Västerbotten and then was abandoned to miscarriages, cavemen, and liedown comedians …

— Why does anything exist?

— Because Gods evil.

— What’s the true order of the universe?

— Chaos …

Grandpa made a sign that the séance was over. He took out his gold watch and saw it was a quarter to four. The day darkened and the wind whistled and wet snow covered the terrace and extinguished the torches.

— It’s just going to be you and me, boy …

— I don’t know why they didn’t come … they said they’d come …

— It is what it is, we’ll just have to make the best of it … You’ve got no friends, that much is obvious … you’re too small and insignificant … you’ve never had luck when they’re picking the lottonumbers … you’ll just have to live with the menu as is … Don’t pout or the boohooboogieman will come and take you away …

So we ate and drank and sang and played … We played Jews and Nazis … kicked shiprats to the curb … suffered … The seas stormed … the earth burned … all Sweden must go … Then Blind Man’s Bluff, Where’s the Penny, and The Pot’s Boiling Over … We played Watch Your Tail, Guess the Jew, and Find Your Pain Threshhold … Mark My Words, Lose Face, and Hang Your Lip … Charades, Monads, and Doodads … Hang Out, Cast Stones, and Crack a Grin … Hawk and Dove, Ratcatchers, and Face to the Wall … Dodge the Louse, Ormen Lange, and Chainsmoker Tag … Pull a Tarzan, Roll the Foreskin, and Hide the Salami … We played Trashpoker, Sink the Boatpeople, and Jago … Khmerchess, Dominance and Submission, and Amnesia-Memory … Starve the Bengals, Solitaire, and Stylite … Grandpa made noises like howler monkeys and hyenas … Holmér and Lönnå … There’s a lot you can come up with on the fly … We sang “It Was so Funny I Had to Laugh”. the one about the baker and the little frogs … about Mother’s little Olle and the priest’s little crow … “Gulligullan Koko” and “Zum Gali Gali” … “Follow Me to Syracuse” … about the raindrops falling on my head … And last of all, I opened my presents from Grandpa. There were two books wrapped in old waxpaper: The Most Clever Jewish Ritual Murders: Adapted for Children and Moomins Run Amok … a puzzle showing the bombing of Dresden … some pajamas Lenin had pissed in … and a pitbullterrier that unfortunately had suffocated in the package …

Then the party was over … we froze so our bones rattled and our joints squeaked … neither of us had the energy to clean up … I’d never had a nicer party … But it didn’t make me happy. I lay awake a long time … Thinking of all that had been … memory is a maggotinfested dump … I’ve only seen the sea once and it was gray and roared … I’ve only seen the mountains once and theywere floating in a soup of fog as thick as rootmash … I’ve only been happy once and it gave me fevershock … If you’re not up and coming, you’re down and out … In the end, all you can do is sit and chew your nails … How will I live if Satan won’t teach me to laugh at suffering … I wonder if I’ll ever do anything worthwhile … like Gavrilo Princip … or Paul Tibbets … Life is a rebus no one can solve … a hairsplitter … a cruel pun … Before I slept, I prayed I wouldn’t have any more birthdays … Forgive me … then forget …