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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…

the dark openings, more scratching. And

long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

I come equipped with fists and feet. Between us,

*****

you know what Stockholm

flickers over her eyes. She takes something from her lunchbox, unwrapping one of her usual dainties from

where, in a kidnap or hostage situation,

sniggers. “You saying you're getting attached to

but I have her attention. “… But there's a reverse condition. It's called Lima syndrome,

“So?”

I your only friend,

lips. “Friend? You think you’re my friend?” The napkin produces a brigadeiro. A flake of chocolate cracks off the small round cake, dropping back into the napkin and she dabs it up

you keep

pauses in her chewing, mouth hanging

all you wanted was to watch me rot, you have your camera there.” I jerk my chin up to

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

you could leave me a bag of potatoes and come once a week. Or even, once a month. But, so far as I can reckon, you're here every day

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

head, 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 you. The same heartless bastard that shipped me out to dig up potatoes for

crosses her arms, sits back in her seat, arches her brows. “I am making you

to have changed. Who ever

“Solana…” she hisses.

contents spill and scatter over the rancid concrete, some of it dropping just this side of that painted line, now less than white.

her heel, she stalks

taut, I snatch up the discarded meal from the filthy concrete, scrabbling to grab broken fragments of

blink of the camera.

bite taken from the corner.

eaten anything

For how long?

idea. Weeks? Months? My sense of time is

had a

empanada, then another, I ram

wrong way and suddenly I’m no longer eating,

swallow, gagging on my scavenged meal, I barf it up, where it

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