Nikanor Teratologen - Assisted Living - A Novel

Hemming Forslund, 64 years old, villager

— I can see them in front of me when I close my eyes … the little kid and the old geezer … always together … always underway … off on unknown errands …

Holger was a demon … apparently he’d been scandalously handsome once, but had decided to do something about that … he hated everything established, obvious, and unequivocal … He wrote a tract, Concerning the Difference in Our Conceptual Worldviews, and then something called Anesthetic Breviarium … He cast neither shadow nor reflection … he was terrified of bidets … he was loud and lustful … But it never turned out the way you expected … it was terrible … they were like Grendel and his mother … satrap and hierodule … You might’ve felt sorry for them, but they were so disgusting … complete outsiders … no one could help them … they were beyond all aid … utterly disgraceful … they knew what was what … reduction and regression … They lived alone … back behind where Zakri had his pasture … the house was a two-and-a-half story mass … darkred with black corners … all the upper and lower windows were nailed shut … They had a Christmasstar and Easterdecorations up all year round … their yard was wild and overgrown … sunflowers, marigolds, and rhubarbs … hops, touchmenots, and bilberries … rowans and birches … huge, ancient aspens and yews … and an ash … Nettles, ferns, and mandrakes … navel-wort, hoodedskullcap, and bugleweed … Moses’s burningbush … They didn’t till the ground … the area was overgrown with tall grass … Old plows, a harvester, and a cowskeleton dotted the hayfence … Two hundred meters from the house flowed a trout-stream … The fish found in the deepest pools were unnaturally large and bitegreedy … Wolves howled in the midwinter twilight … a lot of superstition and queerness … the entropicforest whispered esotericsecrets … it wasn’t a good place …

The boy’s name was Helge … ninjirkilkin … you didn’t notice him at first … on account of Holgers flair and flamboyance … He seemed easily startled … a little slow … never said hello … had trouble even with small tasks … a lively imagination … the nearest other kid was in Kusmark … Holger wouldn’t let Helger go to school … forged a doctor’s certificate … eczema and gas-triculcers … otitis and skin cancer … hoofandmouthdisease … Holger wasn’t exactly tonguetied … no one can accuse him of that … he founded the French Anal Annales school and analytical philosophy too … wrote the Analects … He was intense and haughty … sublime … beyond good and evil … he had an extremist’s smile and a kind of Paleolithic charm … If you rubbed him the right way, he was as gentle as you please … But if he felt he’d been insulted, and he always felt that way, there was no end to it … For us who had to live nearby and stay on our guard, it’s a relief that he’s gone … we feel refreshed and reassured, like after a bad wetdream … I don’t know where the boy got off to … Holger slurped up earthworms … stole salt off the roads … there was always a swarm of flies around him … like Beelzebub … Holger Heresiarch … Mister Malibog …

Now that he’s departed this life, we can begin to ponder the great, eternal questions again … though they may always go unanswered … why they stopped showing the The Forsyte Saga … and A Family at War … how I could’ve missed that minigolf putt … who in the hell stole those unripe apples in the fall of fifty-five …

Krinsp anonymus, 57 years old, policeman

— You bet your ass the police knew all about Holger Holmlund. He was a serious alcoholic and even went in for narcotics. We could never pin anything on him, though, not until a couple of days before his death, when I got him for having the handlebars on his packmoped too high. His fine was a five-kronor gift card made out to the dwarves in Kåge.

Still, he was often a suspected of serious crimes: I remember a few years ago, it was Easter Eve, when a chubby oldbat in Sandfors discovered three little boys crucified on the chapelwall. They were dressed up like Jesus and the two thieves. Scattered on the sand were ciggibutts with sepiacolored lipstick on them, which we know that Holmlund used for his blacksabbaths. But we could never connect him to the crime: several Biblethumping Buggers swore themselves sweaty that they’d seen him gambling away his pension at the pecar-irodeo in Norra Bastuträsk on Good Friday evening.

Another couple of examples of vile, unexplained events that Holger Holmlund was very likely responsible for: In the wartwinter of seventy-nine, six or seven pious oldwhores disappeared from the nursing home in Rökgroven. A glassblower who sucked like a kissinggourami found their remains a year later in the trunk of an abandoned dieselthresher on the tractorroad south of Gustav Gustavsson Grönlunds skunkfarm. In the trunk was also: 1 surgicalbag, whose contents were used to skillfully torture the hags to death, 1 copy of The Vivisection of Cripples by the queen’s mother, and 1 Childrens Bible , with notes written in Holger’s ornate hand: terrifying curses, gamasch, damasch or something like that — enough to make the cock of any ordinary mensch stand on end. Too bad fingerprint-ing hadn’t been invented yet, then we could’ve tied him directly to the murder, as well as to the collection of priestlygear that we also found in the trunk. We took Grandpa, the devilspawn Holmlund, in for questioning. Some bonehead had burst his eardrums, though, so it was difficult to make yourself understood. He shrieked deafly until he was blue in the face that nowaynohow did he bluesuck any bluenigger’s bluerod. An officer, who shall remain nameless, but who liked to dip his sideburns in peasoup and then suck on them, lied to Holmlund and said the boy had already confessed to everything.

“Hohahah!” Holger cackled and licked his glasses clean.

He knew you couldn’t get a single sensible word out of Helge, his orphaned grandson, and besides, the boy loved his Grandpa.

I said: Holger, we know you killed the oldwhores. You’re so crazy, not even the lice will have you. Be that as it may: if you’ll just admit that you stole the thresher from poor Aron and scribbled nasty words in the Childrens Bible, well temper justice with mercy and let you go home, right after we’ve lit up your ass with our paddywackers. Everything we said was recorded quick as fuck on a tripewriter by some little touslehead who tasted like cinnamon between the thighs. Pursing his lips, Holger saw right through my bullshit. It was obvious, though, that the sap had started rising when I promised him a spanking. Still, he was sly, the old pike, and just shook his head and waved his hands dismissively.

“I didn’t do a thing!” he shrieked, at the same time semaphoring like the deaf homos on Novaya Zemlya. “I never went near the oldbags and I’m sad and scared!”

He grinned, so we shivered, and a seasoned chiropracticconstable puked up some undigested buggratin on the coffeeandnookiegirls knee.

“There are witnesses, Holmlund, who saw you dressed in sexy lingerie at the old folk’s home in Rökgroven on the same day the urwhores disappeared!”

“Who’s been badmouthing me?”

“Oskar Lindkvist from Kåge, Norrlands largest soap-and sun-drydealer.”

“He’s lying! May his balls shrivel to two raisins and his dick get stuck in a waffleiron!”

“We want what’s best for you, Holmlund. You need help and you know it. Take the chance we’re offering!”

His freshlaid lawyer sat there apathetically pulling hairtufts from his downy forelock. His name was Erika Åmärg and he’d lost his cock in a foxtrap. But he was educated. Holmlund elbowed him in the side and shouted that he wanted to leave.