Grandpa trembled with the effort his story was taking … The woods brooded over his dark saga, the eternal struggle between evil and good.
— One word, the foulest word there ever was, began to make the rounds: Cunt … they had cunts, people said, like little furry animals, smoother and softer than anuses, not as heathenishly narrow … All who tried it were sold … Amfooorrrtasss!!! That’s what it was, all right, the Wound, the gaping, bloody, festering sore that wouldn’t close … They used cunts to take Norrland from us! Eyes full of bittersweet treachery, tongues agile as squirrels … Unlucky love walked among us, burning and pillaging … The bitter fate of Enkidu! They croaked in our arms, begging forgiveness for their desertion … The whores closed in on us, they were merciless … just snuck into our rooms at night and started gobbling … the vampires … coaxing ever-more perverted, bewitched cavaliers into their entourage … not to mention their wagonloads of brats! their knickknacks and householdparaphernalia! … They got off on cheapthrills and expensivegifts … had lowtastes and shrilltongues … daughters of Lilith and Circe … O Tertullian! o Juvenal! Jean de Meun! the godly Earl of Rochester! They made it to Fraukälen … Mensträsk … we prepared for the last battle … drugged ourselves with soma … They broke through our defenses … Gumboda! … Kankberg! … they rushed over us! We fought toothandnail, spit in deaths face … did all that was manly possible … raged in silence … we were like grandpa beasties protecting our young against devils and trolls! The best of us fell, bleeding from a thousand and one mortal wounds! we didn’t call retreat in time! better to be a stuckhog than a lapdog! There was a hundred of them for every one of us! they were like lemmings! Modern men with realjobs and soundminds! fawning, prudish, lecherous cunts! They kept on pushing and pushing, like they were floating logs! Vercellae and Camerone! Maldon and Roncevaux! Culloden and Liegnitz! Poltava and Stalingrad … We marched against them from the endless, godforsaken forests … We had axes, broadswords, and spears … we knew how to use them … The ground shuddered when it drank our Aryan blood … We fought like Teja, chanted laments like Gelimer! We fell with Aryanogrecocks pointing straight towards heaven, took twenty enemies for every one of us, but they just kept on coming … Animals came to our aid, but Mausers took them down … Giantbears, arcticwolves, sabertoothtigers, mutantrabbits … We protected our grandsons with all we had, no one would touch them while there was still breath in our lungs! They slaughtered us by the thousands! mutilations and outrages! bloodyshame and meatyshivers! they were sly as Phoenicians! horny as Etruscans! merciless as Israelites! They brainwashed wounded prisoners of war and little boys alike! Taught them to love pussy! and everything else that makes life a living hell! Work! Sobriety! God and church! Law and order! King and country! Offices and factories! Clerks and critics! Bureaucracies and marketeconomies! Majorities and institutions! Parliamentarism and massmedia! Intellectuals and popularopinion! Legibility and literacy! Slave mentality! Slave morality! Creditors! By God! If only they’d killed us! spared us the sight of warriors turning into pigs! Down and Piltdown! After the invasion of the caitiffs and shrews life became what it is now … predictable … mundane … soulless … where your only thanks is a fist in the gut and shame is your only reward … They killed fantasy, honor, and ecstasy … Grubbs and mildew took the cow pastures and crops … The Colorado beetle and the Spanish slug did it for the potatoes and other vegetables … They domesticated animals … began to slaughter them … A few of us got away … refused to be tamed … planned our revenge … the last splinters of a shattered nobility … Like Miltons demons … and I am Satan himself … Accusing mankind before God … We make our home in the hidden places … as close to death as possible … outside of reality … the beastmen of deserted farmhouses … backwater marauders … hoochplied wolfhounds … depopulation’s wackjobs … Our time has come … let the battle cry sound … the lycanthropic revolt can begin …
Grandpa fell quiet, kissed me hard on the mouth, put me down, and stood up.
— Its getting colder, he said, gathering up his heatingpad and trudging on.
The ravens launched themselves heavily, silently, into the air. I followed after, and it was like I was walking through a mist … into that darkness, silence, cold and loneliness …
This is where we come from, that is where were going, so we might as well start breaking ourselves of the habit of living …
__________
Нuldra — an elusive forest nymph in Scandanavian folklore
zingaros — gypsies
urnings — homosexuals
bedlamites — madmen
navvies — day laborers
Claqueurs — hired clappers
quislings — traitors to ones’ country
lotitos — Michel Lotito, the famous metal-eater
wankhers, dirdirs, and pnumes — see Jack Vance
haruchai, skest, and jheherrin — see Stephen R. Donaldson
coalbiter — idle youth
bunco — fraud
barghests — legendary, giant black dog with huge teeth and claws found in the north of England, particularly around Yorkshire
abhumanist — see Jacques Audiberti
kurucarriers — kuru, also known as “laughing sickness,” is a neurological disease made famous by an epidemic that broke out in Papua New Guinea in the mid-twentieth century; the disorder is believed to have been spread by endocannibalism, or the eating of the dead of one’s own tribe
Helusians, Oxioners, and Finlanders — Helusians and Oxioners are the tribes that Tacitus found “beyond existence,” where the known world ended; they “have heads and faces of men, but the remainder of the body is a wild animal.” As sharp-featured Cornelius concludes: “quod ego ut incompertum in medio relinquam” inkslinger — tattoo artist cockmaker — maker of bridges or pallets for watches and clocks Teja — Last of the Ostrogoth kings in Itay, led the desparate fight against the Byzantine army in the years 552–553.
Gelimer — last king of the Vandals
III
— As long as you can make others suffer, there’s no reason to throw in the towel, Grandpa exclaimed jovially.
He sat in a rocking chair sewing on a Confederate flag. Ein Heldenleben was playing in the background and Larri Isokyrpä and Torsten Murkström were just saying thanks for the coffee-kind of ironic, since Grandpa had mixed strychnine into it and it was just now starting to work. You have to find something to do, you know, when things get slow. Anyway, Larri lived a while longer, looked me in the eye, tossed his head, kicked a bit, but it didn’t help. That guy was a loudmouthed jerk who’d rearrange the face of any kid he could catch, making their two nostrils into one. And now they lay there, blueberryblue about the lips, and Grandpa put aside his handiwork and came up to them.