Assisted Living: A Novel (20 page)

—Aah boy, he sobbed, chasing away the lipmasseur, she was just ghastly. I haven’t been that submissive since the Christmas I lay with my broken cock in a Lappish hut and Uno Taikon forced his way in through the backdoor.

He looked at me and those terrible eyes were wet with emotion.

—You may be a hoyden and small as a girl down there, but there’ll always be a place for you up Grandpa’s exhaustpipe. You might be as useless as a lightningbolt in a woodpile, but when it’s a matter of life and death, you get the job done. You’re like a pinch of snuff up God’s hairy nostril, he finished and told me to unpack the licoricerolls.

—You’ve got to have some fire in your guts if you want to play with devils, he exclaimed as he dunked a roll in turpentine. That frontloader should’ve been stripped with a woodplaner! But this sour flame’s still smoking, you know, Bejn-Burman won’t makeglue of me yet. Now take some of the edge off your hunger, this is so good it melts in your mouth.

We didn’t dare smoke after our snack, but just toddled along like two rawthighs on their way to Golgotha. Rotten cadavers made insolent advances and a facultyparrot burped up a lecture, “Well-to-do Wankers in an Everyday, Dirty Little Swedish Industrial Community.” But then I saw a light weak as a mother’s love glinting from a narrow hallway off to our left. We tippytoed along and swallowed our tongues to stop from breathing. Then we peeked through a crack in the door.

Paul Holm lay on a Judebag with his eyes shut. A Mangalitza pig, the bones of its lower back jutting against its flesh, humped him like a jackhammer.

—Oh, ohyeah, Paul shrieked unconvincingly.

The purebred boar was old and timid and had lost all its finesse. Its twitching flesh was covered in sweat, but Paul’s haughty face wore a look of complete dissatisfaction. No matter that the pig’s cock was doggedly hammering his persnickety asshole. He was as unmoved as if he were offhandedly wanking off to Yanni. Suddenly he whipped around and dug his thumbs into the boar’s eyes. The animal jerked and squealed like a sourwoodfire and then went limp. Paul grabbed a pitchfork and rammed it into the pig’s soft belly, and the fleshyfuck bawled, like the first time Down-in-the-Mouth Märta sucked babooncock in the People’s Park. The pig’s rancid snout snapped blindly, but Paul dodged like a bellydancer. Then the captivating old geezer grabbed a gaslamp and brought it down on the pig’s twisted back, causing the animal to burn like a Christian at the stake. It tossed and shrieked like a grandmaon a zombiecock. Soon the fire died away, leaving a pile of sooty, smoldering bacon. Paul hawked, spat, and then pulled on a pair of khaki shorts and a yellow shirt. After that, he sat down on a bag of Khrushchevbran and lit a tallow candle and a Gitanes. Making the sign of the swastika, Grandpa stepped forward, devastatingly handsome in his soiled cryptsuit.

—
Nilapadhana,
he chanted in a dark voice, his eyes burning like quasars.

Paul looked up, his gaze soiling everything it touched.

—You still alive? he whispered rudely.

Grandpas nod was like a doll’s.

—Why are you lurking around in my barn?

—I’m so fond of you.

Paul’s laugh was smooth as a cadaver’s caress.

—Cut the bullshit! he chirped. Anyway, I prefer a cock up the ass.

—Too bad you fuck pigs!

—Bo-Lennart humped so bad it’s just as well he’s dead, Paul said and tore out a blackened hunk of flesh from his lover’s smoldering corpse. He took a bite but spit it out again quick. Then he snuffed out his ciggibutt, stood, and took a step toward Grandpa. All at once they were hugging and kissing with filthy, gyrating tongues. When Grandpa tried to grab his ass, though, Paul broke it off.

—Not now, he mumbled.

Grandpa wiped his forehead with a piece of Jesus’s shroud.

—Damn but it’s hot in here, little gaffer, he complained.

—The animals thrive on it like a cunt in the sink, Paul said. But sometimes you have to rake a few of them over the coals, otherwise they get all strepto-leninistic.

Paul was sweet and delicate as a fairy. His long, silky white hair, which framed an ascetic doperface, was smoothed back. Those old nostrils began to vibrate, though, when his arrogant eyes found the corner where I was crouching.

—I know the smell of a sickly child, he muttered.

—That’s just my boy. Hes real handy with his mouth.

—So that’s how it is, smiled Paul. Come out so I can see you, don’t be afraid. I just love little boys.

I crept forward with my balls retracted and my heart in my throat. When I reached Paul, I curtsied and bowed and then stood there with downcast eyes. All I got for my pains, though, was a knee in the jaw that sent me rolling.

—Satan’s smelly cunt! Paul gurgled, What a pasty little colt! If you weren’t Grandpas boy, I’d carve your eyes out!

—And I’d ask the Lord to protect me for the sake of Virgin Mary’s vaginitis, I threw out.

Paul scratched one of his many liverspots and smiled.

—Good, he said at last, you’re more promising than you look, ciggidick.

—I’m trying to turn him into a real crass bastard, Grandpa said. But I think he’s got too much cunt in him.

—Should we kill him?

—Nah … Maybe … I don’t know …

—Abel Allmonikus and his woolyheaded niggerdogs! Paul cursed. Aren’t you man enough to kill a child?

—Tweedledeedee old Paulgeez, Grandpa smiled lifelessly. Now what do you say to shutting off the suctionpump and inviting us in for a little soup and sour milk.

Paul Holm positively dripped with venom, but then thought better of it. Wordlessly he turned toward home, and we followed. The tallow candle quivered feebly as he made his way through the seething passages. Animals fled at the sound of our steps. After about fifteen minutes, we reached the tarpaulin separating the house from the barn. Groundcherries and Judas’s coins surrounded the frontporch. Suddenly, Paul grabbed a healthy looking piglet. Stars danced in his eyes as he squeezed the life out of it. The piglet shrieked and shat and Paul tossed the dying corpse into a corner of the dark basement.

—My dear child, here you’ll see all Jie great trophies Paul has collected throughout the years, Grandpa said in a friendly tone and pointed to a stuffed alderman hanging on a wall in front of us.

Paul’s reserve melted a little and he lit a sevenbranch candlestick. The rumpusroom came to life like a bloodclot in the heart. The walls were covered with Paul’s prey. Every trophy had a brass plaque recording what had been killed, when, where, and how. Next to the barn’s entrance a huge hydrocephaluscranium hung alongside a sabbathgoat’s darkly gleaming horns. Rows of embalmed cocks, mandrillbutts, and mottled retireehides gave way to mammothparts, doxies in fur coats, an entire sasquatch family, and a mummified
Australopithecus.
Hundreds of alcoholfilled jamjars held cherubic toddlerheads. The real prize of the collection, though, was a manticore—wiry and bloodred with three rows of teeth in every mouth and a scorpion’s tail—poised to spring, a basilisk: that huge snakecock with a murderous gaze, a nerveball from a kikeplanet near the horsehead nebula, and a fewthings I didn’t know what they were and a few others I don’t want to remember.

—This one was hard to kill.

Paul stroked a stuffed author’s unwholesome face.

—I had to crouch in the dungcellar beneath the cowbarn a whole day and night before I got him.

The placard said: “Teratological author. Cryptogerman. 187 cm., 80 kg., 20 cm. cock. Killed the twenty-seventh of October nearly 2,000 years after Christs inglorious death under my barn with my dear old tencommasixmillimeter .416 Rigby.”

Grandpa lit a gray Prince.

—What was so special about him?

—He had some papers on him describing how folks like us live and what we do.

—What did you do with them?!

—I used them to wipe my ass.

—That was the right response: Satans dysangelium must be kept secret from the uninitiated until the Antichrist’s arrival.

—He’s close, Paul smiled darkly and led the way into his sick house.

We climbed a warped staircase to the back of the house. A woebegone cryptozoologist impaled on a taxidermist with rigormortis was standing in a niche. Paul kicked open the basement door and led us into the povertystricken kitchen. He moved a stack of beastsexmags and a Möbius and Weininger off the rickety, stained table and brought out two hollow meteorites, which he filled with blacksoup. Grandpa flipped through Abdul Alhazred’s original
Necronomicon
and I scratched my scraggly hair. Paul laidout the sooty maincourse and scraped some burnt flakes onto plates for desert.

He sat them on the table and watched Grandpa.

—This spread is a little sparse, Grandpa said in the selfrighteous, vaguely threatening voice that guests tend to complain in.

—You always do this! You’re always a pain in the ass! If you were anywhere else, they’d fuck you in the duodenum just for being the way you are!

—But Paul! Grandpa hiccupped, Why are you so pissed off. Has the devil got your panties in a wad!? Tied the duodenum into knots?!

—Youyoudamnfuckinsatandontknowhowitfeelswhenigetprickingsinmychestandstomachwheniseeyouigetallmessedintheheadsomeonecomeandputmeoutofmymisery!

Grandpa’s cold eyes were mocking and Paul slunk off to the john to dry his tears.

—He’s stingy as a Chinese priest, Grandpa muttered, shoving aside the cupboardcurtain and disappearing inside.

He rummaged around for a bit and then came out with an ELC-brain in brine, a bowl of shredded pigcunts, a tub of Vaseline, and a nicotineloaf.

—Kolyma-Paul’s shots are stronger than Karelin’s lecherholds, he nodded in the direction of the bathroomdoor, which had just opened again.

Paul came out as though nothing had happened. He threw himself into his chair and began ladling out the black soup. Grandpa dug into the brain with his bare hands, and at his nod I spread Vaseline on a piece of bread.

—Forgive me Paul, Grandpa slurped out, I didn’t mean what I said.

—I forgive you, because you’re not right in the head.

Grandpa bent over the table and pulled Paul close to him. Then he gave him a sloppy wet kiss. He reminded me of a neighborgeezer comforting a kid who’d just puked.

—Being all anguished didn’t help much when old Herod took a shine to babybashing, Paul proclaimed. But all human lives are of equal worth … they’re not worth a shit!

—Typical Paul! Grandpa laughed, turning to me. You see, Paul here, when he’s not being a troublemaker, is one of the finest misanthropes to ever claw his way out of the pateruterine cavity. But since he learned everything he knows from a fellow with a PhD in Cryptic Oncology, don’t be surprised if what he says sounds as squirrelly as morals do to a girly.

—Not so unlike yourself, Grandpa, when it comes to the purely intactual, Paul observed. I wonder how some of the other boys are doing, though. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of them since our schooldays.

—Whatever happened to poor old Torkel?

—Professer of Processorfelling in Lappbatikhalet.

—And Bulimic-Henning?

—In a psychiatrichospital.

—What about that slanteye with feverblisters?

—Kang Sheng?

—No, the other one.

—Anton Szandor? I heard he founded a Satanic cult in Pissiniemi.

—Thinking of them gets me all tingly.

Grandpa slurped up the Rolandicstrip and wiped his mouth with a bib that Nils Poppe had given him as a thankyou for services rendered. Then he sprawled in the rickety crofterchair, flicked away a gooberdinky, and lit a handicappedciggi.

—But I still say, Paul, my old friend, that you and I were the two the man in black had the highest hopes for. And I hardly think he’s been disappointed.

—True, true, Paul nodded sagaciously, a junkie’s insectsful wisdom written all over his far too lovely features …

—You and I were the only two who followed Baphomet’s call, Grandpa declared and took a swig from his pocketflask, which was filled with fermented biturongpiss and spiked with Elie Wiesel’s bile.

—Nah, there were a few others just as promising …

—Like “Måntengrymmer” and “Jan Orsa Päll” …

—Yeah, but they frittered away their evil on mere mischief. It takes more than celebrating Gilles de Rais’s birthday or rattling off the peristalticconfessions every night to call yourself Hell’s emissary. Most of them didn’t make any more splash than a fart in the bath. They lived following Martin Luthers motto, “Live and let live so you won’t get mauled,” rather than the Lord of the Flies’ “Buggering thy neighbor beats the hell out of getting a rattan cane in the ass.”

Paul half-heartedly tried to shoo away the persistent flyswarm as he fell into daydreaming.

—Oh, how his dead voice burrowed deep into the mustiest corners of the brain, planting the black seed that changes all you see to gray. “Seek out need and show no mercy,” he ordered. Great and terrible, cloaked and cowled, in chronically magnificent condition. He kept shagtobacco, you know, in a real heteroballsack. His rough hands gave the toughest whoreboy caresses. And the sulphurtaste of his slimy grizzlynuts … He touched me deep inside … He was so hard and went so far in … His cock was colder and rougher than the resinous dwarfpines on Ryssbergets baby-barbecueplateau.

—I’m ready to admit he was charming, Grandpa said reluctantly, trying to cut short Pauls gooey reminiscing as politely as possible. But compared to me and my Grandpa, he added, so low that only I heard him, he was a frostyvirgin trying to spruce up his deliriumfrazzled frizzdoo with spermdaubs. Now Paul, he said, louder, the boy here has been complaining that he’s never got a fishingpole wet.

Pauls nostrils widened.

—So I was thinking that if you don’t have plans for the afternoon, we could cast a few out in the swamp.

—Heeheehee … That little ratcunt has you so wrapped around his wormeaten parsnip you don’t know inside from out.

—As long as there’s strength left in my sphincter, no one farts in my mouth and gets away with it! Grandpa shrieked and sprang up from his chair, knife drawn.

Paul tried to bare his teeth at the same time as somersaulting backward. He smacked his head on the ironing board, but came sickquick to his sockless, ungulatehard feet. He groped after the fireiron and began to hum a potpourri of Gullan Bornemark’s lullabies. Grandpa crackled with rage and feinted with his scalpel. Paul circled nimbly around the overturned table, egged Grandpa on, and tired himself out with futile attacks. When I saw Grandpa begin tostumble, though, and heard Pauls maniacal “Wipe wipe wipe that sour face away,” I decided to go to the aid of the master of my nights. Paul then knocked Grandpa down with a jab to his right kneecap, but got a kick in the chin for his pains. I didn’t need any more encouragement. I started an electricdrill, jumped forward with a side-waystwist, and buried it in Paul’s left temple. He glanced at me irritably as the drill ate into his rotten cerebralcortex. Then the light in his dull eyes extinguished. I shut off the whining drill and wiped the boneshards and brainflecks out of my eyes. Paul’s remains, however, were lit by an underearthly light. Clear, white, and glorious against the dingy rug, peaceful as a stillborn in a slopbucket. Grandpa clawed his way across the lambertianarose parquetfloor and drove his scalpel into Paul’s alabaster cheeks. After the guy’s face looked like a Sutcliffesteak, he sliced open Paul’s belly and pulled out the viscera and lungs. He tossed the shriveled heart to me.