Assisted Living: A Novel

by Nikanor Teratologen

  I made my eyes wide and Grandpa lit two black Blends.

  —I’ll never forget the look on his face when he figured out I’d just severed his salvation, Grandpa giggled. His face was as gray as Auntie Eskil’s roughest pube. Of course, I was choking with laughter, but John was so thickskinned he barely whimpered. Since then, though, he’s become the worst sort of homebody, a real brownnoser. But you know, it was like Leif and I were meant for each other. It was too bad he had diarrhea most of the time. I sold him to Sixteen Lammby, the trashpeddler, who was into dwarftossing. Poor Leif, it didn’t take much to make him puke, but he could tear up a cock like nobody’s business. Kissing him was like taking a mudbath, Grandpa reminisced dreamily. His tongue was slimy as a wombat’s ballsack and his saliva tasted like catpiss. I’m not ashamed to admit it gets me right here, right in the pants, just thinking about it.

  —But Grandpa, what about the Old King?

  —Come and sit on my knee, girlyboy, Grandpa said coaxingly, and I didn’t have much choice in the matter. It looked like the Old King was just gaga for the Uberrace. “I just want one night of your homespun ass,” the Old King, Mr. G, croaked as he rammed me with a tennis racket. He drywanked like that for about an hour until his Little Prince wept blood. Then he started to sob. “I wonder … might the king blow?” I asked. “You taste like fermented herring,” the King said, going all sham elegant and smacking his lips. He gave head like a girl, though, and I didn’t know whetherto laugh or cry. He was so fucking sweet I just didn’t have the heart to cum. So I smeared my cock with ricotta and planted it in His Majesty’s fungoidal lovetunnel. “This is one girl who can’t take it anymore,” Mr. G wept. You know, of course, that he was an archeologist. While I fucked him like a vole, he spouted some papist bullshit about balanitis’s conquest of Jericho. Next day, he was so sore he couldn’t walk. But did the Old King have the grace to say thank you, my boy, job well done? No sir! He refused to acknowledge me. It seems he was ashamed and regretted our lovely time together. “Don’t make a dirty mess of yourself with a woman, whatever you do!” he shouted as he left. The Old King may have been a tatty old sow, but he made me a man. I knew he liked Negro spirituals, so I sang “Give Me that Old Gay Religion” every time he got what he was begging for. But the brokendown old bugger was as ungracious as Satan himself.

  As the story ended, Grandpa shook off his sorrow and anger. He let his gnarled pettingfinger glide from my navel to my cock, which stood upright to meet him.

  —Now imitate the Little King, mite, he demanded and licked my left earlobe.

  __________

  FICEDULA HYPOLEUCA—the pied flycatcher

  OLD KING—Gustav V

  LITTLE KING—Prince Carl Philip

  WHO CAN SUCK WITHOUT SLURPING—allusion to a Swedish sentimental song “Vem kan segla föruten vind” (“Who can sail without wind”) Skaeliptom—earliest known name for Skellefteå

  SPÄNNARBERGET—in Kåge

  BUMHOOK—a game like Indian leg wrestling

  KARASARA—Swedish, a woman who likes to hop from one man to the next

  BALANITIS—inflammation of the foreskin and head of the penis

  XXX

  Grandpa and I were on our way to Stålberget to burn Siegfried Israel—sson to death in his house, and were following the animal trail countless generations of alcoholics had beaten through the brush. On our way, we passed through a jumble of stones dotted with gnarled pines. A goshawk was riding the barebreasted sky. At a bend in the path, we stumbled on an angry fortysomething in a redcheckered shirt and carpenters pants. Flushed and enraged, he was uncombed and unshaved. He’d been laying in wait. When he saw us, he whipped his pants off. He grabbed Grandpa, who was shedding his skin just then, not a pretty sight, let me tell you, and bent him double.

  —Let’s see your liceridden ass, you old fogy.

  I drew my Lapp knife and got ready for some hand-to-hand combat, but Grandpa shrieked like a stonewalled stockbroker: “Stay back, boy! this doesn’t concern you!” I obeyed and backed off a few meters. Still, I couldn’t look away. The guy had a huge, unabashadly magnificent cock. He went down on his knees and pushed in until he was up to his balls in my Grandpas ass.

  —You give me any apeshit and I’ll fistfuck you with my rough lumberjackglove!

  Grandpa had to grab a pineroot with both hands to help him take the rawfuck coming his way. He opened and shut his eyes, lewdly rotated his hips. But the big laborer wasn’t into that kind of nonsense. He grabbed Grandpa’s hips hard, forced him to hold still, and impaled him again and again with his furious, explosive cock. It was a good plan … Draw back and shoot forward, retreat and attack … Like Mundelföri twirling his firewhisk in chaos … Grandpas hornjuices squished, he blathered and yodeled … You could hear it for miles …

  —Maaaooo … mu-hu, mu-hu, maaah … awwa-aw-wa-awwaaa … Jesus … Jesus … JEEESUSS! A-a-a-aaa! Yeeesss! more! Oh yeaaaahhh! Take me as I am! Straight up! Hole in one! Aah-Hilding-uhh-Hilding-mmh-Hilding! Oohgooood … you’re so hard … you’re so big … you’re so far in … I can feel it all the way to my heart … Goooddd! Fucking Satan, damned to hell!

  Grandpa began to cry it was so good.

  —Buuuaaaa! I love your nasty cock! Waaahhh! its so raw! Boo-hooo! fuck the shit out of me!

  The guy was rough and violent, just like Grandpa liked them. He rode the expresstrain for about an hour, pushing and shoving, grinding his teeth and changing his grip and position. He beat Grandpa bloody with his clenched fists and called him everything you call your bosomfriends. For his part, Grandpa called on heaven and hell. He shrieked himself hoarse in the process. By the time it was all over, lust had done him in. The guy came silently and resolutely, pulled up his pants, kicked Grandpa in the tailbone and chin, and marched off. I made my way up to my Grandpa, dressed him, and gave him something to drink.

  —Did you know him?

  —I don’t know his name … never asked … met him three four times … always angry as hell … but he fucks like a god …

  Grandpa was too beaten, bruised, and stiff to continue on … Homeburning would have to wait for another day … I stole a David Brown tractor and we drove home. That evening in bed, before we abandoned ourselves to our nightmares, Grandpa said: Love’s a curse … a toil and a trouble, a fence and a farce …

  —Is there love other than the cockkind?

  —Oh sure … But the animalmagnetism between cock and ass, or cock and mouth, or, Jewgodforbid, cock and cunt usually gets in the way. Trust me, boy, evil always triumphs … Even though sometimes you wish it could be like in The Amorous Adventures of Prince Mony Vibescu and those other classic fairytales … A love pure and true … short and sweet … soft and warm …

  —Ethereal … seraphic … comic …

  —You don’t know what you’re saying … you’re all tuckered out … Go to sleep before we quarrel … Nightynight, snoopydoo …

  —Nightynight, Grandpa …

  __________

  MUNDELFÖRI—a jotun (giant) in Norse mythology; in von Werth’s Aryan cosmology, he whisked the universe into being out of chaos

  THE AMOROUS ADVENTURES OF PRINCE MONY VIBESCU—aka Les Onze Milles Vegres, by Guillaume Apollinaire.

  XXXI

  —Paul Holm lives here, boy, Grandpa wheezed, sinking down onto a rotten ovarianshaped stump.

  —I need a smoke, he panted, completely out of breath.

  In front of us a house and a barn were falling into each others arms like Latter Day Saints on Sunday. Tangles of weeds dug their claws into the dying homestead, which was afflicted by oldboyscurvy and gayrot. It was the stuffiest buggersummer ever, and the town of Lillkågetrask quivered like sourpork in the heatwave. The people around there are nothing but slobs and slatterns, happy—when it comes to the lice in their tangles—to live and let live. Most are fat and blue, not too good at standing on their own two feet, but great at creeping around on all fours. The forest around here is spindly and sparse: driedout old pines, to
ppled trees, a few stumps. You can’t see far, either; it’s like everything is obscured by a mist or haze.

  —Gabriel’s fireygold, cuntsmelling piss! Grandpa swore, letting his reptilian eyes roam over the pockmarked swamp dotted with cowpatties and placentas, covered with branches and shrubs, tur-nipbeetfields and peatcrofts.

  The neighborhood in general was the graybrown of an old gypsy-cock, but around Paul Holm’s barnhouse a riot of color was in full swing. In Lillkågeträsk, most of the soil consists of cigarette ash; the only things worth growing there are assbiters and buggerleeks. Around Paul’s home, though, abominations flourished in the fermenting mould, the thriving afterlife of shit and cadavers. Grandpa hawked a loogie and swallowed his ciggibutt.

  —Hishiryoconsciousness is something you only reach when someone fucks the shit out of your compostculvert, he said and straightened his emaciated carcass. I never thought I’d have the strength … It sure ain’t like the old days, when you sprang like triggerhappy fool with a portablehuntingblind between church-villages, just to see if anything was going down!

  He brushed the maggots from his shoulders. The severe black suit he wore contrasted nicely with his vampiric complexion and those pale blue eyes.

  —But fuck my tender asshole, it doesn’t help to plead with Jesus! Oh well, let’s go brownnose old Paul! he said and staggered to his feet. By the way, you’d better be a nice and polite boy when we meet Paul, he warned, as he pushed his way through the pigweed and scabroustissue toward the farmyard. Paul is harder on kids and animals than anyone I know, he continued and came to a sudden halt. By Satan, what happened to you? Did you see the spermcovered face of God or what?! he exclaimed, eyeing a tortured bogbody wearing a toecap. It’s clear as a sneeze in church that Paul has been at this one, he said, poking the broken shitcarcass with his stilettocane. I think Paul is a Jew, he said and blinked, sickened, before heading toward the Holm house.

  Grandpa had to use his cane to clear a path, since the going wasn’t exactly easy. Down off the hill, it was easy to forget where you were. Everything was bigger than it should have been. Gargantuan leeks and fireweed eight times the height of a man. Ferns as big as back in the days of the dinosaurs. The mosquitoes were especially hard on me. I bled from eleven thousand wounds.

  —Bromberg’s Bloody Sunday! this is nothing! Back in my day there were winged insects with only one thing on their mind: putting out decent people’s eyes! Everyone suffered! Ninety-five percent were blind!

  A brusque shove.

  —Watch it there, teddybear.

  He suddenly lashed out with his cane and carved out a flesheating, cocksucking orchid’s gallyellow, naughtyboy snout. Kidney-colored sludge gushed out. Others, their smiles mocking all that breathed, were greedily closing in, swaying forward on thick, hairy stems. They smelled hot and bitter. Finally, though, we managed to fight our way out. Hopping over a feebly trickling stream, we found ourselves in the farmyard. The land here sloped down to a lake. On closer examination, it was obvious this place used to be a respectable Västerbotten farm house … But not anymore. Now everything was a confusion of tangledcreepers, mostly ayahuascas. Nestlesnarls wrapped themselves lasciviously around drainpipes, squirtingcucumbers looked for a mug to cum on, stinkhorns revelled in their sunripened, carrionfed bloat. The remains of beasts killed by suicide and emergencyslaughter both were scattered everywhere. It was a crawlingwanker’s paradise.

  —Are you still daring enough for the riddle of the sphincter? Grandpa asked.

  —When I’m with you, Grandpa, I’m not scared.

  —Now you sound like something out of The Brothers Tigerheart, mite … Let’s pretend we’re Gog and Magog on our way to a smoking hot prayermeeting …

  It seemed Paul was a gospelsectarian. The fields were victims of neglect. A rusty castrationdevice lay askew in a pansybed, and an old Massey Ferguson buzzed with anger about forgotten to-dos and unfinished tasks. Judas’s ears, Wandering Jews, and kohlrabi grew around the entrance to the farmyard. A surly badger was roughfucking a young waitress who, blissfully whimpering, was bent double over a fence. Ruffs clucked lapwings burred, an elk sampled a poison saltlick and went bellyup. A Gabriel in a gray coat landed on Grandpa, ladybugs mobbed dungbeatles, and a raffsetgrasssnake hauled ass after a mouse running on fumes. It was Eden and Gomorra, baby, and the heavens themselves blushed at what was going down. But mammals were the minority lifeform here. Mourningdoaks and death’s head moths darted between clusters of smoke-, butter-, and cartilageballs swaying in a musty breeze. Mouldspattered narcobuggers hissed from a thorny refuge of Satanstickbrush. Scurvyherbs, ringwormeuphorbia, and ileusranunculus shook spastically, burly burntorchids and swarthly wolf’s bane rustled their leaves, vericellazosters and oxeyecervicalcollardaisies were about to pass out. Runners and creepers, shooters and sprouters, buds and bloomers! Seeds and spores, pericarps and shrubs, flowers and fronds! Phallos vulgaris, vagina spurius, anus murinus! Smoking-and explodingvines held court, nightlurkers and aeaeaeberries beckoned with poisonous fruit. Devil’s weed flourished among poisonnettles, green and white lovage struggled with ruddy witch’s herb. Goldbrown birdsfoottrefoil, purpleshavingbrushes, darkblue madwort! Confused rattails were in danger of a Ruskie ambush! Dog tongues panted over hot red tufts of burninglove! Virgin Marys rubbed shoulders with bastardalkanets and lessertwayblades. Rosynorns and fiery-gold tigerlilies stood out against black slack-and slitstars. Scrapironpiles had given up jammering for attention. A big calf gave its last kick. I was glad to be allowed to exist.

  Grandpa took over.

  —I bet your bleedingbrain that Paul is in the barn getting himself a raw beastfuck, he said.

  He started off again, his shadow proceeding him, and soon he reached the dry farmwell. He bent over the tile rim and saw some emaciated toddlers clamoring for something to drink.

  —Well, I’ll be damned, he chuckled, whipping out his sweaty balls and pissing on them.

  He shook the last drops of piss onto me and slipped his cock back into its holster. We started on the path to the barn, which towered before us like a windowless sepulchre. Bumblebees and wasps burned and stung us, but I taught them to show a little respect. Grandpa always had a cloud of flies buzzing around him, no matter the weather or season. But now all I could see was a black whirlwind; I couldn’t even hear what he was saying. Paul had doused the area around the cowbarn’s door with Agent Orange. It was also mined, and Grandpa buzzed and whirred. So I crept through the mess of tendrils along the ancient concretewall, which blocked off all light and air.

  Finally, I discovered a huge rathole behind a bunch of dandelions; it was so big I was able to fit inside. I found Grandpa, but the flies were so insane I had to drag him by the belt.

  I crept forward and Grandpa came after, his nails digging into my cheeks to make sure we didn’t lose each other. The barn was as black as the soul of a knockedup woman and the gases made Grandpa want to hurl. We waded without seeing much through a lake of sewersludge; the shit was up to my crotch; finally, we found a ladder fastened to the wall and climbed up. Then we made our way along the rafters. Grandpa’s flies fell away one by one. When our eyes had finally adjusted to the dark, we realized we were in a labyrinth. Mutatedcows with whorefaces made their way through the sludge, humming hohum hits. From the stalls off to the side we could hear angry bassvoiced livestock bellowing their two cents worth in a neverending quarrel over Talmudic slaugh-territuals. Musk oxen clamored for the right to die, glowworms burned their little hearts out, and a colony of surrogatemother- smothers wrapped themselves in rosy cocoons. In one stall we could see a godfearing, Protestant ram wearing a straightjacket, and in the stall next to it a sow in a harness took the virginity of a crucified, dazzlingly white bull.

  —Sri and sa-bdag, Grandpa said, we’ve entered the holy of holies … Eleusis for sure …

  He gave my cheek a gruff stroke, chuckled and then crept on. Apparently, one had to be agile here.

  —It’s not worth thinking and feeling d
own here, bolardwarf, “here time becomes space”!

  On the whole, though, I didn’t feel much like Parsifal, and I certainly never pictured Grandpa as a Gurnemanz. More like a Klingsor. But something strange was definitely going on. From the outside the barn hadn’t seemed so huge, but from the inside it felt neverending. We were in a hallucination, an illusion. It felt likethe beams were taking us farther and farther into a dream, and there was always something worse waiting ahead. A smokebelching pit gaped beneath me; you could see black flames dancing far, far below. It was surrounded by a wall that kept back the sludge. Grandpa crawled up beside me. I thought he wanted to make love, so I tried to kiss him. But he gripped my neck hard and pushed me down against the beam.

  —Satan’s balls, he croaked, calm down, horndog, or I’ll throw you head-over-heels into the netherworld!

  Then Grandpa pressed his lips to my right eye.

  —This, he whispered excitedly, this is one of the seven pits of hell found on that miserable dirtball we call Earth. It’s the abode of He Who Has No Eyes, he who calls decent folk home when they’re too old and sick to cum anymore … Down there no day is ever wasted and the fountains run a hundredproof. Animals are tame, they hop into the pot of their own free will. Everyone dines on stewedadvertisingexecutives and policechieffillets … You can babble all you want and everyone tries hard to please you. The words never give out, they never get battered and threadbare. Everything’s always orderly, no shab or drab anywhere … There’s never any reason to be despondent or depressed … you can sample hallucinogens from far away galaxies … All the bossboys are down there, from Heraclitus to Cioran, but they give you the respect you deserve … If you want, you can torture angels … You always know exactly what to do with yourself … You’re always giving tit for tat and they let everything slide … You’re always right, you’re held in high esteem … An innocent person dies for every word you speak … You get to play poker for entire galaxies … interrogate all knownlifeforms … subvert evolution … In Hell everyone is given a cock tough as leather and hard as Krupp steel … longer and rougher than the nastiest IdiAmincock! Your balls are always ready to burst and your asshole is as wet as a salivating confirmationpussy! You can have as many fuckbuddies as you want and they always pack it in as best they can! They look like Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, and Adolf Valentino rolled into one! They give head like sucklingpiglets on crack and their assholes are so narrow they screech when you ram them! When they fuck you in the ass, it’s so good you see fireworks! you hear the delicious sound of Jewbacon frying! But there’s one thing you should know, oy, and it’s this: skirtchasers end up somewhere else! they’re damned to gospelheaven and they’re forced to suck syphilic cunt for an eternity’s eternity!