Free Assisted Living: A Novel by Nikanor Teratologen Page A

rules this time … We said you didn’t have to die if you died in the game … Grandpa won … he always does … he makes the rules … he pulls the strings … he’s behind it all …
     
    __________
    näken —a water sprite

XIV
    Grandpa was in bed with his cock wrapped in a wet, warm towel, reading aloud from Geronto-Eroticon by Ernst Carson, the Skråmträsk devil.
    —“…let men protect their sweet flesh from sexual intercourse with sundrenched whores—hair like frostbitten chaff, asses like rusty, sooty, greasy burntout ovens” … bring me my munchies, you little rat!
    I sat in my dogcrate gnawing on the corn growing on my largest foot.
    —Bring me my special brownies and buttermilk!
    I went to get his snacks. Down in the kitchen, a feral cat was raping a cacklingtease of a laughinggull. I walloped them both with a firepoker and went back upstairs with Grandpa’s evening snack. When I got there, his hoarse wheezing voice washed over me like the scent of pigs roasting near Smammarn.
    —“…Augustine already wrote about how nasty, dirty, sleazy, and queasy a womans embrace can be … Kill the firstborn of her loins! Let a cry be heard from every sty! For every killingblow, a man goes free! As long as a single motherwomb exists, we’ll never find our way back to Our Father! We’ll be nothing but wideeyed little boys when Doomsday’s Bloody Sunday strikes! On that day, magisters will roll up the starry skies! The earth will swaddle us like a rotten mummy’s bandages or a stinking, unchanged diaper, hail big as horseballs will beat the recreant earth blackandblue … Copperbright bikers with awful hygiene will wander cold waiting rooms with shaking voices: ‘How odd that mommy’s late
    Grandpa put the thick leatherbound book away when I crept close to the bed.
    —Ernst was a fellow with the right attitude, he said. He could tear the throats out of a hundred and fifty chickens a minute and never show a trace of remorse … the guy was icecold … But his writing is as bad as a cop’s.
    Grandpa opened the box and crammed his mouth full of special brownie. I poured his buttermilk into a mug.
    —I could tell you things about Ernst and his life that would make Unicef and those Save the Children queers look for a nice quiet corner to curl up in and die … But I think I’ll give you an oraltest instead!
    His sharp, level gaze turned Latinate.
    —What are the sevendeadlysins?
    —Humility, generosity, chastity, modesty …
    —More!
    —Uhhhohhh … bulimia! meekness and productivity!
    —Bravo, boy, you’re the slowest of them all … And my totem is …?
    —The brown rat.
     
    __________
    Smammarn —small lake in Lappland
    Skråmträsk —village in the Skellefteå

XV
    —I owe all I know to the Herrey Brothers, Grandpa said, looking embarrassed and taking a drag from his Kent ciggibutt.
    —All too often the all too many assume it was Nietzsche himself who transformed me into natures stroke of luck, which is what you could say I am. But no! it was the Herreys!
    —What about Basedow and Bekhterev?
    —I met them when life had already used and abused me until I felt like Sigge Fürst trying to blow Satchmo. Of course, Hegel’s Phenomenology and Schreber’s Memoirs served their purpose, when I decided to dynamite my brain so it became as small as a strandloper’s. Think and feel as little as possible, always be happy and kind! he commanded and speared a titmouse with a dart.
     
    __________
    Herreys —a Swedish pop group made up of three Mormon brothers
    Basedow —Karl Adolf von, a German physician who studied Graves’ disease (also known as Basedow’s disease)
    Bekhterev —Vladimir, Russian neurologist who studied what came to be called Bekhterevs Disease
    Schreber —Daniel Paul Schreber, author of Memoires of My Nervous Illness .
    Sigge Fürst —Swedish film actor, known for appearing in the films of Ingmar Bergman, among others.
    strandloper —Afrikaans, “beach