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…

down

It’s just a rat…

the dark openings, more scratching. And a

gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

with teeth and whiskers. I come equipped with

*****

do you know what

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

where, in a kidnap or hostage

saying you're getting attached

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

“So?”

I your only

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

you keep

pauses in her chewing, mouth

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

want me to feed you? We can always change that you

But if that were the only reason, you could leave me a bag of potatoes and come once a week.

simply regarding me. I continue. “Am I your only friend, Sola? Is

swings her head, giggling. “So, you're my friend are

anyone out there who thinks you're worth it? The daughter you had slated as a sex-slave when she was a kid? That middle-aged hooker? You've

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

claiming to have changed. Who ever really

“Solana…” she hisses.

working, she says no more. Instead, 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, now less than

heel,

takes no supernatural premonition to know what's coming. Launching myself at the fallen food, 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,

adjust to the green blink of the camera. It hardly matters. My attention is on the wealth in

bite taken from the corner.

not eaten anything like this

For how long?

idea. Weeks? Months? My sense of time

I had a

another, I ram the

the wrong way and suddenly I’m no longer

on my scavenged meal, I barf it up, where

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