Nikanor Teratologen - Assisted Living - A Novel

“I was just wondering,” … my dad said when he finally noticed me, “if we should let the calf live.”

Mom had been stuck in the kitchen for the past few years. She looked up and you could tell she’d been pretty before she’d eaten it all away.

“Nah, you know, Papa, he’s had his time in the sun … he’s had his chance, but he didn’t take it …”

Grandma saved me, though, because she wanted to do me. But Holger kept mostly to himself. After three years, we were fully trained, we knew all about making our rumps blush in the bath and why everything under the sun gets up and off. One time Holger and I hung out after school, we were going to go hunting with slingshots. There was this oldcunt who wrote shit-books and lived in a carwreck out near Dire Straights. She was the one we were gunning for. Holger had always been real out-doorsy and so he found us a willowbed beside the path that gave us an open fieldoffire. It had rained and so it was pretty slickwhen she finally came huffing along. There was nothing special about her … she was just annoying … that was enough … we were fed up … She put on airs, pretended to be a fortuneteller, made herself out to be a psychic. And you know what, she looked right at where we were hiding and shouted at us, even though there was no way she could’ve seen us. It wasn’t what you’d call the perfect shot, but Holger wasn’t going to lose any time. He aimed and sent that ball flying. It took her eye out! And before she could get a real fire going in her pipes, he’d put her other eye out! Then we rushed out and talked some sense into her! Guess if we were proud!

Henning Mikaelsson, 87 years old, farm owner, former comrade of Holger Holmlund

— I hung out with out with him in the fifties, back when Irma was still alive and kicking. She was a piece of work all right: sleeping higgledypiggledy with the livestock and creeping beneath the bin-gotable to suck on any blowhard she could find.

Holger was pretty stylish back then, even though his hair was going thin and his ass was getting bony. He wasn’t nearly as interested in sex as he was later in life, though. If you want someone to blame for the fact it was all downhill for Holger Holmlund, it’s Irma. She’d go to town on any old pieceofmeat, but she wouldn’t touch Holger’s with a pair of sugartongs. I don’t know how Holger took it. We didn’t talk cunt. We massacred bugs with modeltrains, and every now and again I’d play the accordion and Holger would sing spirituals. Sometimes the devil would take him and he’d lockhimself in his room and work like a hellion on his Biblecommentary, which was so horrible that just thinking about it made you want to scrape your foreskin right off.

Sometimes he’d recite whole passages from memory, and I’d weep and pray for him. He read up a storm, and he knew every language under the sun.

He borrowed thousands of books a year, a lot of them musty and gray and from far away places. And man, how he wrote! Up one side and down the other, roll after roll of cheap toiletpaper, while the devil sat on his left shoulder and dictated.

“If only the apemen don’t off me before I’m done,” he’d say. He hated Judeobolshevism, but he was totally crushed when Stalin died in ’53.

“He really gave them hell,” he sobbed.

And he’d say, “Everyone’s a devil,” every now and again.

He stayed out of the sun, so his skin wouldn’t get dark. He thought shampoo made your hair black and curly, so he washed his with sagopearls. He was afraid snuff would make his nose crooked and his lips thick, so he smoked twice as much.

“What are you going to do if you get rikscancer, Holger?” I asked him once.

“Kill them all,” he answered, catching a blowfly in his mouth and swallowing it.

Margot Sandmark, 81 years old, Grandma Irma’s friend

— Holger Holmlund was the nastiest wretch to ever dirty up a cunt!

The fact that there were ever people like him in the world is unbelievable. I’ve seen some things in my day, but he took the cake … He murdered Irma, I’d swear it on my husbands grave! And Doris, too! He was so ugly, it was a disgrace … And what’s more: if a specialevent was happening, a party or a wedding, say, he’d make sure to humiliate Irma in front of everyone … He lied to her when they got married … Said he was polite, charming, virile, and rich … Promised her Happily Ever After … He was a shitbag! Emergency-rations were all he had to offer! He pretended to work in the church congregation … consoling survivors … crying over newborns … He brought people nothing but grief! Longwinded as he was, you’d go into metestrus just listening to him … He said God was invisible! that there’s more than one sun! that it’s bad to torture livestock to death! that movies aren’t real! You’ve heard it all yourself! Toys in the attic! gadfly! galorum! gawd! grainworm! An abomination! He was sick! What a wastrel! A donothing! I felt so sorry for Irma, I nearly drank myself to death … I don’t know how many times I stuck my hands between her thighs, looked her in the eye, and said: “You’ve got to put an end to him … he’ll make you crazy … he may seem like he’s been good and tamed, but I know the type … he’s out of his mind, Irma! … listenhere! beagood-girl! there’snootherway! it’syouorhim! he’sgotmurderinhiseyes! dowhatl’masking! hellsbellslrmadon’tyouseewhathe’sdoingtoyou! nobody’llbreatheasyuntilhe’sgone!”

But Irma wanted him … on a shortleash, of course … She needed the money, poor thing … Holger threw a fit every weekend, Irma had to whip him back into shape … Damn, he was difficult! Irma loved to dance, you know, but boy you should’veseen him fuss when we were getting ready to go out! Just begging and hollering and making a scene! “Irmadon’tyoudaredoit, you’llbethedeathofme!” and “Iloveyoumorethanfinalvictorypetyouknowthat” and “Youcandowhatyouwantwithmejustsolongasyoudon’tleavemeineedyoudamnit!” and “Forgivemeforlovingyousomuchl’mgoingtoburst!” He’d grab her around the knees, but Irma knew enough not to give in … She just made herself up even bolder than before, she didn’t bother to wear underwear under her dress and she made fun of him when our girlfriends came by … If she found some tasty morsels at the bar, she’d bring them home, work them up, tie Holger down, and force him to watch … Irma was the finest woman you can imagine … homely, surly, portly … It was never the same without her … She loved a good romp in the sack … What stamina! From dawn to dusk! Up and down, front and back! She knew everything about everyone! and she could talk your ear off, that’s something anyone’ll you! With a smile on her lips the whole time! She had Doris in fifty-six … The girl got along fine … she was unbelievably like Irma, both in her attitude and around the mouth … Holger wasn’t allowed anywhere near her … He read like a maniac … Irma burned his books, but he always got new ones …

I told her: “Put his eyes out, that’ll stop him from reading those wicked books …” All for nothing! She was too sweet and kind to make it when the prince of this world kicks up a rumba with Conway Twitty … What I’d been telling her was going to happen finally happened … thank God, Doris was at her Grandma’s, Permesiva, who lived out in Gråberg … Irma had got the cockshivers … They found her in a ditch … he’d used a vacuumcleanerpipe to force meltedlead into her cunt … They never arrested him for it! the buggerfucks! Three old friends swore he’d been with them all weekend making pineconeanimals … So they left him free to wreak havoc … A wolf in the flesh, that’s what he was … a leftist … He held nothing sacred, he left nothing in peace … They took Doris from him, but he murdered her, too! And then he took her boy, Helge! How that boy’s going to make it now that Holger has so obligingly up and kicked it, is something I don’t even want to think about … All you can do is hope he doesn’t understand too much about what’s going on … he always was feebleminded …