Assisted Living: A Novel (23 page)

—As I live and breathe! Hugo Silvergran exclaimed, gawking through a crack in the door, whos this illustrious person standing on my doorstep? Is it Grandpa out trolling for quarry?

—Ah, Hugo, Grandpa coughed, by the Goat Lord, how I’ve missed you!

—Listen, friend, I thought it was just the opposite, Silver-gran smiled coquettishly. You weren’t so eager the last time you stopped by.

—Can you ever forgive me? Grandpa sobbed and lit a purpleciggi in a hipgirdleholder, I’d give anything to undo the past.

—That all depends, Hugo declared. In my heart of hearts I know you’re gooey as a baby’s ass, Grandpageezer, but dear Lord you’ve got a mouth on you.

—I’m begging you on my knees, Grandpa blubbered and folded up like a prayingmantis. You know it hurts me, he wailed, we know each other inside and out and we’ve had so many beautiful times together!

—Yeah yeah, so we might as well make up, Hugo laughed dryly. Quit your groveling, you’ll ruin your fancy clothes.

Grandpa had on a sulphurcolored smokingjacket, a nice shock-pink pullover, his pissyellow, flared gabardinepants, and a pair of saffron pumps. His SS-cap was set at a jaunty angle. I was dressed for going out in my comfy leather and rubber getup. It was elkmatingseason and the hunters were out in fullforce. Volleys of bullets echoed through the marshes of Drängsmark. A cow with leadpeppered flanks drug herself into a bramblesnarl only to be met by a flamethrower. Since cock-, cunt-, and bellyshots give hunters the most prestige, a swarm gathered around the wounded animal, which bellowed in pain and heat.

—I’ve got something on the stove, you might as well come in and have a bite, Silvergran offered. The boy can come too, he added graciously, arranging his moldy features in what was meant to be a smile. It just looked like he’d swilled some sperm and lost all his money, though.

—Thanks for the offer, I’m just overwhelmed, Grandpa gushed, cuddletousling his hairwisps.

Then he strutted into the peatwalled entrancehall and pushed his way through a thicket of homespun paraphernalia. Finally, he shouldered his way into Hugos kitchen. I followed with a lump of oldcum in my throat, and last came Hugo, waddling along on gangrenous legs. Grandpa swept off his coat and hat elegantly and threw himself down at the kitchentable. He spit in my face and made me climb into the gynechair normally reserved for Hugos clientele. Silvergran wasn’t looking too good. He wrapped a spermflecked angorasweater around his bumblebee waist and adjusted his Lovikkasuspenders. His varicoseveiny legs were bare and thick socks swallowed his feet. He had some nasty suckscarson his tits and turquoise curlers in what was left of his hair. His skull was carrionyellow, his hairlipped mouth was an angryred, and those frogspawn eyes of his were cataractwhite. As soon as he got into the kitchen, he stuck a sheet of newborn babyheads into the gas oven.

—You know, it fucking sucks, he complained; to get these right, you have to grease the sheet with cuntjuice from gigglygirls.

—The hell you say, Grandpa exclaimed and injected his temple with a cannula of heroine. How do you come by it, and how in the name of Mary Mother of God’s gnarly anus can you handle that stuff?

—I know this Afrochap, who’s bi. And, you know, that crazyass mofo fucks so many of the lesserbreed that he’s getting sway-backed. So when the cows are grimacing and writhing, he’s usually able to milk them for a couple of deciliters. I trade him some cartilageporridge for it and then I suck his salami.

—That just makes me want to puke, Grandpa moaned sybaritically. Still, I don’t begrudge you your babyheads, Hugoito. What do you use to stuff them?

—A homemade mixture of boogerstew, steelwool, conductoreyeballs, carbuncles, and sulfuricacid.

—Have you ever thought about using luespurée?

—Nah, that’s way too hoitytoity, Hugo said defensively.

Grandpa took dainty girlypuffs from his ciggi. Then he cleaned his Ahnenerbe glasses and stared illnaturedly at Silvergran’s plumpass. Hugo was tinkering at the stove, brushing a sauce made from syrup, ketchup, and sawdust over some tumoraspic. Grandpa began to flip through an issue of the
Svensk Damtidning
, absentmindedly dribbling a spitblob on Princess Victoria and, sansanima, playing with my stiff little cock.

—So how are things with you, he finally said, mostly to break the silence, which was starting to writhe in agony. Are you just wasting time and jacking off or do you see a little cock every now and then?

—Ah, you know how it is: you have to be around and about to get something on and in yourself, he joked, swallowing a snotcube.

—I’m just so goddamned happy to see you again, Uno, Grandpa gushed. Fuck me, but I think I’ll just whip it out and go.

—God, you’re making me blush, Hugo said, going red and digging out a handful of dingleberries to garnish the aspic with.

—You know, I never thought fornication was a waste of time. In fact you might say its been my life’s calling, Grandpa declared. If I do say so myself, Master Hämmerlein has been good to me. The fact is, I’m the fairest one in all of Kågedalen. My cock was forged in martyrs blood and it’s never forsaken its lord and master! Not once!

—You’re about as fair as an outfucked old pigfart’s gut, Grandpa, and your cock’s stiff as a maggot! a gruff voice bellowed from the door.

Two giants pushed themselves into the kitchen. The one who had spoken was clearly the leader, on account of his age and hard-headedness. He was none other than Kågeträsks firechief, Johan Westermark. He sank heavily onto the pigskinsofa, fixed Grandpa with a malignant stare, and pressed the barrel of his moosehunting rifle against Grandpa’s forehead.

—How should we do this, he asked arrogantly, swelling with selfsatisfaction and twisting his pigbristle mustache with legendary, agile lips.

—But Johan, whimpered Grandpa, who was really beginning to sweat now, why are you being so nasty? Are you just trying to make yourself unhappy?

—You’re so fucking smart, you old devil! the other man cackled in schadenfreude.

He was Ralf “Slurpykiss” Markland of Norrlångträsk, a hard MBD-geezer in a gray persianhat, a cottonsweater, and rainpants. His great passion was dynamitehunting burrowinganimals. However, he’d happily toss handgrenades at anything from ungulates to handitards on wheels. He had a stooped figure and his eyes were like snuffedout ciggibutts.

—Just tell me what I did to you, boss, Grandpa whined, twisting slender hands encased in blackvelvet, onanists gloves.

—Let’s not waste words on that, Johan declared and then laid the gun across his grannylap. I just wanted to see if you got scared, you homomofo! he roared and took off his shabbyhat, revealing a scrubby thicket of grayhair. Then the firechief unbuttoned his hamsterfurtrimmed wolfskincoat to reveal his shaggy breast. His powerful, huge prick was, however, still partly obscured by a handmade weave of boyscoutprickdown, with balls that dangled like coconuts over the back of the couch. Johan Wester-mark was a weatherbeaten, bowlegged charmer straight from the marsh’s edge. He had crocodilohumor, a potashheart, a certificate in childtampering, and a potatodumpling nose. It was anyone’s guess, even his, how many times he’d won the Finnish Thousand Fags Rally. In sports like smokinginbed and selfinflictedfailure he was unparalleled.

—By the fuckers that made mincemeat of Ernst Rohm, Grandpa swore and lit a ciggibutt with trembling fingers. I couldn’t tell if you were pulling my thirdleg or what, Johan, but there’s one thing you should know, and it’s this: I often think of you when I jerk off.

—Nice to hear, but it doesn’t change anything. I never could stand you, Grandpa, I just don’t know why.

—It isn’t important, Slurpykiss broke in, to spray cream into a Belsenqueen like that.

—Ah Ralf, Grandpa smiled and took a drag of his ciggi, go suck your own damn cock before you pucker up for others.

It was silent for a moment and the kitchen grew inhospitable as a womb. We blinked at each other like lizards in the shadow of a corpse, and I thought I was going to die. Darkness was about to lie down with our recalcitrant countryside. The only thing you could hear was the occasional accidental shot from some automaticweapon.

—How about some grub, boys! Hugo chirped. He took the babygratiné out of the oven with a shrunken, smokestained ovenmit. Then he unlocked the pantry and started setting out this and that.

—You know, I haven’t been able to keep anything but fattysperm down this year. When business gets slow, stores get low. Anyway, I hope I can find something tasty, even if it’s from year before last.

He divvied up a bag of sores, a dryplacenta, and a clairvoy-antumbilicalcord. That was followed by a plate of rats floating in sphincterjelly, a live Turkishkidney, two cold labiacroustades, each with a deepfriedclitoris on top, and a bowl of Inuitforeskins sprinkled with powderedsugar.

—Come and get it! he announced, an idiotic expression on his eructated, liferavaged face. He set out a jug of Kool Aid and a bottle of muskratschnapps. After the meal was over, he served up coffee with a shot of Bhopalacid. Each person also got a niggerball with skin and hair still attached. All told, it was pretty satisfying. Of course, Grandpa and Ralf came to blows over the Turkishkidney, which gave a heartrending shriek when they both speared it with their forks, but otherwise everything was peaceful.

It wasn’t until afterward that it all went to hell.

—To be honest, that meal amounted to highwayrobbery. What a disappointment. You had to gnaw the shit out of the Eskimoskin just to get it down, Grandpa growled, picking the few rottenstingers he had left with a pimp’s stilettoheel.

At that, Hugo turned gray as Fru Öberg. He was a housewife to the tip of his cock and one harshword was enough to crush him, especially when it came to his mishmash. He covered his eyes with rheumatic hands and cried silendy, the livingdead incarnation of reproach, a smoking Kekkonencigar stuck fast between his cichlidlips.

—I just don’t understand why you didn’t serve up the babygratiné and tumoraspic, Grandpa continued, sour as a cunt. A nice man like yourself must be ass-deep in greedy little buggers the whole year, you said as much yourself. Cum on a kisser, then stuff your tummy, as Per Albin always said.

—Hell, you old sow, Ralf Marklund swore for Hugo, who was speechless. You’re the nastiest thing to ever straddle a cockhorse in all of Kågedalen!

—Ugh, Tiddly-Om-Pom-Pom, I can’t believe all the things you pull out of your ass, you old bastard, Grandpa exclaimed. I’ll never forget the time Pattaya-Uri tricked you into fucking Slag-Inez. The whole time you thought it was a seven year-old’s milky-white marzipanass.

—You know, everyone wonders how you lived with Grandma all those years without your cock slipping inside her jellybelly sometime or other, Slurpykiss threw out, trying to hide his old shame.

—Sure as Henry Rinnan really wrote
Emil of Lönneberga,
Grandma was all man! Grandpa declared. She had whiskers and the strength of a cavetroll. I swear by the Impotent One that she had one hole down there and one hole up here. As Nietzsche said: a whorehag grows not a meatsausage in her crotch, nor can she drink a Lappishshaman under the table. But Grandma had a hangmans cock and she drank like a mongoswine under the butcher’s knife!

—Don’t fight over my Grandma’s sex. He Who Rules Over Piepel and Animals is the only one who knows for sure, I said … the boy with the Neeskenssideburns.

—Shut your hole! Grandpa shrieked until his voice cracked. By Satan’s gut, I wish I’d choked you as soon as you were squeezed out of your papa’s ass!

—The scamp is right, Johan declared. Grandma’s been dead for a good many years and it’s neither here nor there what she had or didn’t have between the legs.

—But children shouldn’t talk back, Grandpa whined.

—You can’t help feeling sorry for him, though, Ralf said. The kid looks like hell.

—Maybe his growth got stunted or something, Johan suggested.

—Someone needs to take the bullshit out of him, Grandpa admitted, but I’m at my wit’s end.

Then he sighed like an honest Jew.

—Anyway, boys, we need to skedaddle on home before the homoheadbashers start camping on the forestpaths, he said to no one in particular.

—You seem worried, Johan observed, and emptied his bottle of muskratschnapps.

Grandpas face said he wanted nothing more than to be gone, but he’d been brusquely put in his place by the feral, grunting Kågeträsker.

—Assbackwardtwat, Slurpykiss exclaimed, baring his inflamedgums.

Then he grabbed the SS-cap and fingered the silver deathhead with his nimble apefingers.

—So you’re a bonafide Nazi, eh Grandpa? he asked and tried to hold Grandpa’s iceblue eyes with his yellow ones.

Grandpa contemptuously lit a marikacracker and blew the heliotropic smoke out of his nostrils. It was obvious, though, that he was scared. He fiddled with a glassjar where a walkingaddictstick was climbing the walls, and examined the neglected warts on his wrist with obscene focus. He glanced out the window and asked how the elkhunt was going, good or—

—We’ll come back to that, Johan interrupted him harshly, wrenching the stiletto out of Grandpa’s Barbiehand.

—Right now we’re going to find out whether you’re really a Nazi or not.

—You bet your ass I am! Grandpa howled, suddenly beside himself. And I’m proud as Satan of it!

—You deny the gassing of over 600 million Jews!? Johan Westermark screamed, grabbing Grandpa’s lacefrill and shaking him like a prostheticcock.

—Hearthisyouyouyou sweet thing, Grandpa mocked, those Jews I skinned in the war were infamous for setting themselves on fire with their own farts and that’s the only gassing I ever heard of, I swear by all that’s dear and holy.

—Lord have mercy, whispered Silvergran and stubbed his ciggi out on a fire-and asheating geranium. If you knew how you sound, Grandpa, you’d flay yourself to death with a cheesegrater rather than live with the shame.

—Hey, Huga-Hugo, Grandpa said with a grimace, caught fast in Johan’s grip like a fart in a bag, I think you should know that I want to puke every time I see you! Why, you’re so ugly, the sperm turns sour every time someone cums inside you!