Assisted Living: A Novel by Nikanor Teratologen Read Free Book Online

leg, the fifth shot like a prayer straight up to heaven. I handed Grandpa the other rifle. It was obviously going to take a while to shut these fuckers up. The woman was tottering on the brink. Hyperventilating, she grabbed her Kanken backpack and took off down the tractor path, herding her calves before her. But one of them still had his pants down around his ankles, so her brilliant plan went up in smoke.
    —You failed to read the fineprint, beastcunt, Grandpa hissed and sent two shots into the rosemarybushes around her boots. I can read lips, you know; I learned back when I had an ear infection.
    Grandpa began to swear so it curdled the air and startled the birds. The cow collapsed, legs splaying. Her hair was a mess; she’d scratched the Satansbait. The third shot entered her pecadocastigo, the fourth burst her womb, the fifth took her in the mouth. By now the calves had caved in. Grandpa took the reloaded Weatherby and let fly. Big Brother ran around in circles, bedeviled and befuddled, tugging at the cow’s leg and making a hell of a ruckus. Grandpa, for his part, emptied the whole magazine. Unfortunately, he missed. After that, he shouldered the Remington, while I reloaded at top speed. One of the five bullets took the calf in the knee, he rolled around and stayed down.
    —Hurryhurryhurry! Climb down, well show them what we’re about!
    Through the door and out onto the platform. I slipped on the top step, fell, and got a branch stuck deep in my armpit. I couldn’t help myself; I moaned. Grandpa laughed and shot me in passing with a boltpistol that took off my left earlobe. Trying to staunch the blood, I limped after him. The bull was pulling himself through the mud toward the car. He cast terrified eyes overhis shoulder, clearly reckoning up all his amortizations. He’d lost a boot and blood was pumping from his beautifully injured leg. Grandpa stopped, legs apart, and gripped his Baby Nambu On-skimodel automaticpistol like an afroamrocop. It took him two tries before he bullseyed the bull’s eyes. The larger calf had already passed out. Grandpa swept him up in his arms, kissed him passionately, and slung him belly first into a mudpuddle beside a fallen tree. That just left littlebrother, and he fell to me, since Grandpa thought I needed the practice. He didn’t even get up, the little twit, just screeched and shit some wicked sausages onto the grass. He was a stubby kid who’d probably thought he’d grow big and strong and learn to smoke Borkum Riff. I bashed his face in with a thick pinebranch. He didn’t have any more tricks up his ass, he just lay there and took it. So I straddled his back, forced his head up and slit his throat with my Ka-Bar Grizzly knife. After that, I puked up the bunch of nothing that was in my stomach. Grandpa immediately set to with the hacking and the carving—“Beware the melancholy, for they will destroy the earth,” he said. He cut fillets from the calves and took a trophy from the bull. Then we headed home.
    —Ah hell, we’re going to miss Emmerdale Farm, we’ve got too far to go! Grandpa exclaimed. I just know Mr. Wilks is going to rape and murder Amos Brearly some episode or other …
    Grandpa carried the Weatherby, and I slung the Remington over my shoulder and the shitsmeared meat onto my back. After a few minutes, I started to get my hearing back. We crossed a mild browngold marsh with vomithued hillocks, watching for the darker spots where you don’t want to step. Time was, these marshes were bottomless and treacherous, they reached far and wide … Later people drained them just because they enjoyed the challenge, and to give the wetland fowl a hard time. Now the marshes were trying to get their own back, right in step with depopulation … we squelchedsucked as we walked … Grandpa sang: “So weit die braune Heide geht gehört das alle wir!” The trees were sparse, hunched over like rheumatics trying to avoid a beating … they were poor, hiding