— Make him hot, boy, and then hack off his slimy rawballs.
I lay on my side and began to suck. The beasts cock tasted like chervil. Just when the ox was so hard it thought it might have balls after all, I took out the cockshears I keep in my waistband in case a Jew ever touches me. The steer bawled and tossed Grandpa into the nearest boathouse. I deftly broke its front legs so it couldn’t escape. Silently, Grandpa staggered back toward the cart and took out a dull, rusty boxsaw. Then we placed ourselves on both sides of the beast and began sawing off its head.
— This is a tough job, Grandpa lifted his voice to drown out the ox after a few moments of hard cutting. It’s mostly cartilage, though, so he doesn’t feel anything.
Fifteen minutes later we were done. Grandpa sat on an abandoned earthcloset and lit a radioactiveciggi.
— Find a boat, load it up, and then well look for some bait.
I splashed my way through the nnre to the wharf. A horrible smell greeted me at the water’s edge, where a tangle of Ulva intestinalis and Delasseria sanguinea mixed it up with waterweeds and crabs. The lake looked like lumpy bouillon served on a quivering plate. Fertilizationcanals originating in Paul’s barnhouse branched out around the wharf, where two boats were moored. One was a dinghy made of resinsealed cardboard. The other was a skiff made from baobabwood. It had a blackpine keel and was shaped like a Finnish whitewaterraft. Small animals were living it up in the roomy sump. I undid the boatchain from the post and clumsily tipped myself in. Then I found a pole and tried to steer the boat back to land.
— Fuck, it isn’t working, Grandpa! I finally exclaimed in desperation.
Grandpa stubbed his ciggi out in the earthcloset, where trash-fish chattered greedily. Looking as calm and collected as a priest during delimitation, he pointed toward a promontory about a hundred and fifty meters west.
— Go there and calm down, waif, because by Satan’s tumorriden ass I don’t want to mess my clothes up!
Grandpa was obviously in a bad mood. He made his way down the beach with difficulty and I followed his directions and rowed west.
— Ruhollahs rough shanks, Paul must’ve been fucked in the head! Grandpa swore. A few years ago, all he did was send his shit down to Lillträsket. That’s a lagoon about three hundred meters southeast from here, he explained irritably, stomping a young penduline tit to death and elbowing his way through creepers and clingers. The terrain became more passable and the fleshy ground played host to cocoplants, opiumpoppies, oralpoplars, groundcherries, and bluegums.
Then the land suddenly flatlined, although a stalk of grain showed every once in a while. Otherwise, it was just mud.
— This reminds me of the Tibetan legend about Lepra-Berit and Leatherface, Grandpa began and recycled an old story from Maldoror s greatest hits.
I think he was just looking for an excuse to rest. After ten minutes, he pulled himself up again with difficulty. He’d been sitting on a shipwrecked timecapsule, which held a multi-and ganglylimbed, minium-and-olive striped visitor from Earth’s near future. Grandpa gloomily examined the white and bloated sky, which looked like a dead fish’s belly. A flock of beangeese flew into the sun and burned like fallenangels. A waterspout that had started in the bottomless pits below Björnhusberget whisked the calm summer twilight. It had schlepped a rotten house all the way from Träskbacken, and was whirling it away toward Lidträsket. After it was gone, silence rolled over the defiled landscape, stifling the contradictory clamors from both propagationarea and offaldump under the coldweight of indifference. Grandpa carefully studied our darkening surroundings. Nothing really excited him, though, since he was already waiting on the darkest night of all. Still, his looks silenced mayflies and dragonflies in their frantic buzzing over reedclumps and garbagepiles. Becquerelcicadas and other players waited for a sign from Grandpa before starting up again. I wanted to burst into song or something, just to keep Grandpa from destroying the world. His eyes offered a challenge to chlorotics and skeptics alike. At the edge of my vision, I saw the shadowforms of fibromyalgic moose and Samsonfoxes with troll and dwarf kings riding their backs. Sprites were straddling dirty, fattened hogs; sexgorged pixies rode Persian lambs ripe for the slaughter; darkelves perched on twoheaded calves. The world awaited Grandpas judgment. With a thoughtful expression, he looked over his mangled realm, the sad remnants of his army. Vampires, werewolves, and demons had either found other sorcerers or had died terrible deaths at the hands of modern Hetero patiens. Pale as a birch, Grandpa continued to stare into the sinking suns last lascivious light. The petty gloom was still waiting on his answer. Perhaps all those creatures of the night could re-educate themselves in the fast-growing fields of computing, media, or finance? Grandpas stiff posture and imperator profile betrayed nothing of what he was thinking. Then he lifted his right arm. At first I thought he was going to perform a Sieg Heil, but instead his workshy hand gave a last mocking wave.
— Nightynight, snoopydoo, he sneered to the twilightcreatures, who existed by the suggestive power of his will alone.
The world knitted itself back together at the seams, and when I finally dared to look all I saw were the solid contours of familiar things. Grandpa was staring at me. If he could’ve sobbed, he would’ve done it.
— Now we can expect anything, lassie. The everyday world will get its claws into us sometime or other. When that happens, the jig is up. There’s no place for the likes of us there.
He walked the last thirty meters to a little pier made from beer-cans and sillyputty. I tied up the boat and jumped ashore.
— What do you think you’re doing? Shove off and get the fishinggear and all our other crap!
I was forced to make two trips. During that time, Grandpa stood alone at the berth. To calm himself down, he talked about the time we shot Palme. The trough and the can made for precarious going, but I managed to get everything onto the boat without its capsizing. Then I carried Grandpa out. Unfortunately, he slipped and fell when he stepped aboard. He crawled to the back, inventing new curses to hurl at me.
— By Ruth, I can’t believe we’re made from the same gristle and snot! The easiest task in the world, finding a seaworthy boat, is harder for you than getting Pelé to blow Muhammad Ali on live TV! using the pope as a bed to boot!
I knew it was useless to argue, so I jumped in and cast off. Moaning with the strain, I pushed us away from land, carving a path through toiletpapergarlands and barbedwirerolls. The water was like bloody diarrhea until we were a ways from shore. Then it was like peasoup shot through with splashes of quicksilver and strings of oil.
— Steer toward Storholmen! Grandpa barked. You know, it was out there that Terror-Nikanor hooked a Jewishly huge devilfish a handtrolley of years ago …
I sat down on the seat and began to row. The slender oars were made of psychomor wood and bit easily into the grainstrewn surface of the water.
— Boy, you’ve got less vim and vigor than Emil Zátopek when he won double gold at the Olympics in, what was it, forty-four? I was there with Rudolf Höss, Commander of Arschwitz, and the mood was all mob: thirty thousand Hasidic miraclerabbis roaring from the galleries of the amphibioustheater and just as many Checkers and Pollards. And there we were, fifteen reckless prettyboys from the SS’s PJ/SE-battalion.
Grandpa suddenly fell quiet, shhshd for good measure, and made the deafmute sign for “If you don’t stop now, I’ll give you an intestinalparasiteenema.” I braked with a splash of the oars and turned to see what had caught Grandpas attention. A few barkhouses, good for learning how to go numb, lurked around Storholmen. And in front of one cottage, a fatgeezer was fucking a littleshaver. We slowly glided toward the fireblackened shore, making for two burntout oxhuts.