Free Assisted Living: A Novel by Nikanor Teratologen

Lejonberg, the frowner, who fenced with pigs using his stiff, naked cock … about “Neerdowell Fredrika,” who had more lice than all the Croats in the Thirty Year War combined … about “Sitting Pretty,” a rickety bowlegged tramp who liked to enjoy a smoke dangling over a great height … about “The Big Scare,” “Finn-Pavola,” and the sweet and mild Sehlstedt, a fervently religious tramp with a holy medallion around his neck …
    Later he talked about Augusta Hamberg and “Poas,” who wandered around Storberget in Lycksele … about the English disease, about huge, hairy warts, and about the poisonous tallowcandles that wereused to get rid of stomachparasites … a driedup old mocassin if ever there was one … about “The Black Girls,” Jonas and Johannes Södermark, who played bedandbordello with every gypsy to cross their paths … they were dark, had rings in their ears, and blowjobs dancing in their eyes … and in their mouths and their bellies, by God … they’d sell out their own grandpas … so long as they didn’t quit … yes, Grandpa realized he’d lost contact with the trampworld …
    —Who wants Sub in the marathon?
    —Johan Westermark … he got full points with three hundred and seventy-eight last time …
    —And I have Kåga-Women … by Satan … for lack of anything better, it’ll have to be “The Stork” Sundqvist …
    Then we were finished with rolling dice and writing stuff down … the marathon was played with ten times ten dice, you start at the top of the list and go down one roll at a time … At three throws, “The Ant” Greenland slipped … she was thirty points behind the nearest challenger … The others were close, between a hundred five and a hundred ten … After five throws, half the marathon, the positions were:
     
    “The Ant” Greenland
160
“Sinbearer”
193
Johan W.
178
“The Stork”
189
“SATO”
166
Rockojärvi
175
     
    It looked like I had two losers to deal with … “The Ant” and “SATO” were the haircurdling showstoppers … Moronic Greenland threw a 24 in the seventh. The tramps and “The Stork” caught up to the leaders. It was starting to look like a triple for Grandpa …
    —Noooo! Looks like Johan, the bastard, can’t even get his cock blue! I groaned when he threw 27 in the ninth.
    Grandpa took the ten small white dice with black pips and rolled them imploringly over his open palm … Then he tossed them onto the felt cloth with a sly look … A quick glance revealed: 36 … fair, but nothing to holler about. The last roll was anticlimactic. Grandpa rolled a three-double: The Bush 6p., Kåge-Q 5p., and Finland 4p., Sub. 3p., CP-q 2p., and Skola, the old master-team, 1p. “Sinbearer’s” winning time was a nice 384 … 6 of 10 rolls of 40 or better … But the ten-time runner scored over 400, so he’d averaged above 40.
    The World Cup ran two “days” with six meets per day. A runner could only participate in one race a day.
    100,400, 1500, 5000 marathons and 4×100 the first day …
    3×3, 4×4, 4×5+1×3, 6×8, 10×10 and four stretches with 3×3 dice …
    The second day: 200, 800, 3000, 10,000, half-marathon and 4×400 …
    2×6, 4×5, 5×6, 8×8, 9×9, and four stretches with 4×4 dice …
    When we played “Lord of the Rings,” Grandpa wanted to be Sauron. When I said it was against the rules, he beat me with Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin. He refused to trade down to a balrog, and waved his hands dismissively when I read the racial descriptions of the Uruk-hai, Huorns, dragons, and Nazgul. On a whim, he let himself be persuaded by what I read aboutthe Nazgul in the rulebook: “If revealed with the aid of magic, they appear in the guise of great, haggard kings with cold, evil eyes..
    —Okeydokeysmokey, I’ll be a ghost, then … and I’ll be a black Numenörean … and an Uruk-hai … You’ll be a fallohidehobbit … a hummerbagge … a buggerwoser …
    We made up our own