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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…

faced down gunmen, soldiers,

It’s just a rat…

the dark openings, more scratching.

enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

abyss comes equipped with teeth and whiskers. I come equipped with fists and feet. Between us, we settle an

*****

do you know what Stockholm

lunchbox, unwrapping one of her usual dainties from a napkin. “What is

condition where, in a kidnap or hostage situation, the prisoner

sniggers. “You saying you're getting attached

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

“So?”

your only friend,

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

why do you keep coming

in her chewing, mouth hanging a little

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

me to feed you? We can always change

and come once a week. Or even, once a month. But, so far as I can reckon, you're here

swallows, not speaking, simply regarding me. I continue. “Am I your only

her head, giggling. “So, you're

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 same heartless bastard that shipped me out to dig up potatoes for the rest of my life. Along

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

eyes, I keep my voice mild. “Did I say otherwise? I'm not claiming to have changed.

“Solana…” she hisses.

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

on her heel, she stalks

discarded meal from the filthy concrete,

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

bite taken from

not eaten anything like

For how long?

I’ve no idea. Weeks? Months? My sense of time is out of the

I had

of empanada, then another, I

Too soon. Half-chewed pulp goes down the wrong way and suddenly I’m no longer

my scavenged meal, I barf it up, where it plops in a saliva-coated mess

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