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…

more scratching.

long enough into an abyss,

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

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

*****

you know what Stockholm

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

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

sniggers. “You saying you're getting attached to

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

“So?”

I your only friend,

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

why do you keep coming

in her chewing, mouth hanging a little open.

me rot, you have

to feed you. I assume you do want me to feed you?

a bag of potatoes and come once a week.

chews and swallows, not speaking, simply regarding me. I continue. “Am I your only friend, Sola? Is

her head, giggling. “So, you're

and save you, Larry? You believe you're worth 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, Larry. I can see right through you. The same heartless bastard that shipped me out to dig

sits back in her seat, arches her brows.

claiming to have changed.

“Solana…” she hisses.

lap. The contents spill and scatter over the rancid concrete, some of it dropping just this side of that painted line, now less than white.

heel, she

in my ankle as the chain snaps taut, I snatch up the discarded meal from the filthy concrete, scrabbling

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

delicacy is almost untouched, only a single bite taken from the corner. And I have half of a fruit

eaten anything like

For how long?

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

had a

another, I ram the food into my

way and suddenly I’m no longer eating,

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

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