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…

openings, more scratching.

enough into an

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

come equipped with fists and feet. Between us, we settle an uneasy

*****

do you know what

eyes. She takes something from her lunchbox, unwrapping

a kidnap or hostage situation, the prisoner forms an attachment

“You saying you're getting attached

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

“So?”

I your only

brigadeiro. A flake of chocolate cracks off the small round cake, dropping back into the napkin and she dabs it

do you

pauses in her chewing, mouth hanging a little

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

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

potatoes and come once a week. Or

swallows, not speaking, simply regarding me. I continue. “Am I your only friend, Sola? Is that it? You've murdered everyone else that might get close

“So, you're my friend are

worth 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

back in her seat, arches her

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

“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 colour has changed. White-faced, white-lipped, scarlet spots at her

her heel, she

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

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

only a single bite taken from the

anything like this for…

For how long?

Months? My sense of time

I had

of empanada, then another, I ram

wrong way and suddenly I’m no longer

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

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