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, soldiers,

It’s just a rat…

openings, more scratching.

enough into an abyss, the abyss

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

comes equipped with teeth and whiskers. I come equipped with fists and feet. Between us,

*****

you know what Stockholm syndrome

from her lunchbox, unwrapping one

for a psychological condition where, in a kidnap or hostage situation, the

you're

She pretending mockery, but I have her attention. “… But there's a reverse condition. It's called Lima syndrome, where

“So?”

your only friend,

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

you keep coming

her chewing, mouth hanging a little

rot, you have your camera there.” I jerk my chin up

you do want me to feed

were the only reason, you could leave me a bag of potatoes and come once a week. Or even, once a month. But, so far as I

“Am I your only friend,

giggling. “So, you're my friend are

saving? That there's 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 not changed,

her arms, sits back in her seat, arches her brows.

claiming to have changed. Who ever

“Solana…” she hisses.

of it dropping just

her heel, she stalks

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, with

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

a single bite taken from the corner.

eaten anything like

For how long?

idea. Weeks? Months? My sense of time is out of

I had

another, I ram the

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

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

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