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 gunmen,

It’s just a rat…

openings, more scratching. And a nose pokes

into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back at

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

teeth and whiskers. I come

*****

know what Stockholm syndrome

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

condition where, in a kidnap or hostage situation,

“You saying you're getting

“… But there's a reverse condition. It's called

“So?”

I your only

A flake of chocolate cracks off the small round cake, dropping back into the napkin and she dabs it up with a fingertip

why do you keep coming

pauses in her chewing, mouth hanging a little

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

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

a bag of potatoes and come once a week. Or even, once a month. But, so far as

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

her head, giggling. “So, you're my

it? The daughter you had slated as a sex-slave when she was a kid? That middle-aged hooker? You've not changed, Larry. I can see right through you. The

in her seat, arches her brows.

I say otherwise? I'm not claiming to have changed. Who ever really changes?” I raise my gaze again, look into her face.

“Solana…” she hisses.

The contents spill and scatter over the rancid concrete, some of it dropping just this side of that painted line, now less than white. Even under the heavy make-up,

her heel,

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

eyes adjust to the green blink of the camera. It hardly matters. My

a single bite taken from the corner. And I have half of a fruit

anything like

For how long?

My sense

I had a

empanada, then another, I ram

Half-chewed pulp goes down the wrong way and suddenly I’m no longer eating, but coughing and

it up, where

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