Klempner

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…

faced down gunmen, soldiers,

It’s just a rat…

the dark openings, more scratching.

an abyss, the abyss will gaze back

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

come equipped with fists

*****

do you know

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

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

saying you're getting attached to

mockery, but I have her attention. “… But there's a reverse condition. It's called Lima syndrome, where the captor comes to empathise with the

“So?”

I your

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 with a

do you keep

her chewing, mouth hanging a little open.

all you wanted was to watch me rot, you have your

assume you do want me to feed you? We

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

only friend, Sola? Is that it? You've murdered everyone else that might get close

“So, you're my friend

You've not changed, Larry. I can see right through you. The same heartless bastard that shipped me out to

back in her seat, arches her brows. “I am making

I'm not claiming to have changed. Who ever really

“Solana…” she hisses.

concrete, some of it dropping just this side of that

her heel, she stalks

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

the camera. It hardly

only a single bite taken from the corner. And I

not eaten anything like

For how long?

Weeks? Months? My sense of time

I had a

mouthful of empanada, then another, I ram the food into my

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

on my scavenged meal, I barf it up, where it plops

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