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What's the obsession with potatoes?

I called her Potato Face when she was a kid.

What does she look like now?

Jenny was no looker at that age…

… But she matured. Bloomed.

Juliana... Never the same twice.

I scratch at my beard. I’ve never liked facial hair in hot climates, but I don’t have a choice right now. Even so, the flourishing colony of lice that has stowed aboard adds an extra edge of irritation.

Lice…

Where the fuck did they come from?

Can rat lice live on humans?

Having a fucking good go at it…

I catch one, squeezing the revolting thing between my fingernails. It bursts with a Pop!

Only another 999 to go…

*****

The boredom’s the worst. Endless hours. Endless days and nights. I’ve no idea how long.

The only breaks in the monotony are Juliana’s visits: just long enough to sit, eat something at me, toss a potato at me.

No, not Juliana: Solana.

Why's she so obsessed with the name?

How many names have I used over the years? Worn like a suit of clothes to be discarded when the weather changes and something different is needed.

I’ve never been defined by my name.

But she sees it differently…

Something skritches and I jerk a look sidelong

It’s a rat…

Just a rat…

down gunmen, soldiers,

It’s just a rat…

openings, more scratching. And a

enough into an abyss, the

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

my case, the abyss comes equipped with teeth and whiskers. I come equipped with fists and feet.

*****

do you know what Stockholm syndrome

something from her lunchbox, unwrapping one of her usual dainties from

condition where, in a kidnap or hostage situation, the prisoner forms an attachment to

sniggers. “You saying you're getting

tilts. She pretending mockery, but I have her attention. “… But there's a reverse

“So?”

I your only

“Friend? You think you’re my friend?” The napkin produces a brigadeiro. A flake of chocolate cracks off the small

you keep

pauses in her chewing, mouth hanging a

you keep coming? If all you wanted was to watch me rot, you have your camera there.” I jerk my chin

to feed you. I assume you do want me to feed you? We can always

the only reason, you could leave me a bag of potatoes and come once a week. Or

continue. “Am I your only friend, Sola? Is that it? You've murdered everyone else that might get close

giggling. “So, you're my

a sex-slave when she was a kid? That middle-aged hooker? You've not changed, Larry. I can see right through

crosses her arms, sits back in her seat, arches her brows.

not claiming to have changed. Who ever really changes?” I raise my gaze again,

“Solana…” she hisses.

she stands, the lunchbox tumbling from her lap. The contents spill and scatter over the rancid concrete, some of it dropping just this side of that painted line,

her heel,

ignoring the jab of pain in my ankle as the chain snaps taut, I snatch up the discarded meal from the filthy concrete, scrabbling to grab broken fragments of meat in one hand, a cake with the other before, with a click, the

the camera. It hardly matters. My attention is

a single bite taken from the corner. And I

eaten anything

For how long?

Months? My sense of

had a

of empanada, then another, I ram the food into

wrong way and suddenly I’m no longer eating, but coughing and choking

it up, where it plops in a saliva-coated mess

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