Potato Fucker.txt

First Written    Tue Sep 27 02:17:10 2016
File Modified    Wed Feb 14 18:32:26 2024
Latest Upload    Thu Sep 19 03:09:54 2024

*Potato Fucker*

Two weeks ago, my roommate died. Two days later, we buried him. One week ago, he came back.

He died peacefully in his sleep, or so I had been told. "Peaceful" being a relative term, the doctors asserted. Yukon had always been prone to nightmares and sleepless nights, so it wasn't too surprising when that was what got him in the end. A particularly bad case of sleep paralysis combined with what I can only imagine was not your average acid reflux led to him slipping away with a windpipe full of puke. Peaceful, relative to falling into a wood chipper I suppose. I half wished I knew what he had been dreaming of that night and half wished to spare myself the vomit-inducing details. All I know is that it had something to do with potatoes.

"Potato."

I couldn't see him, but I could hear his voice hovering above the pillow I had jammed over my ears in an attempt to get some sleep. I'll admit, I was afraid when I heard him the first time. When I realised he could only say one word, I found him ridiculous. Soon after, I found him annoying.

"Potato," he whispered louder, drawing out the 'o' so long I flinched expecting to feel the warm air from a mouth too close for comfort.

Instead, I felt nothing. He was gone, physically. Sure, you can whip out the textbooks and tell me that sound is a physical phenomenon and that some tangible source of energy is vibrating the air, but I can tell you I've heard it all. I'm a sound guy. Voice acting, foley, synthesizers, and the studio's kitchen sink. I know when I feel sound, and I know when a dead man is reciting root vegetables into my stream of conscious thought. It's like when they go on about how a loved one's whispers from the grave can drive you mad. Your dead dog's bark, your late great aunt's footsteps, all taunting you with the fleetingness of a familiar sound now associated with shitty old death. Except in my case, it was more of an outside voice than a whisper and it was literally driving me mad.

"POTATO."

That was the loudest he'd ever been and I was about to turn on the lights to banish him back to potato limbo when I saw what he had been 'potato'-ing at in the dark. A black figure, hunched over in the doorway. I almost thought it was a blanket at first. When it twitched, I saw it was more like a thin black veil covering god knows what. I must have let out a small gasp because it realised I was looking right at it and "ran" off. I assume it ran because it sounded like brisk steps rushing down the hall, but it didn't sound right at all. It sounded like human footsteps mixed with something else. Like there was too much contact with the ground. I should have been able to figure out what it sounded like, but I was too busy trying to shake my limbs out of the positions they had tensed into out of fear. Was this what Yuke had been feeling all those nights? For once I found myself wishing he would say something. Another human presence, living or otherwise would have been a blessing then. Someone to confirm I wasn't dreaming, or dead in my own fatal nightmare. Unfortunately he was quiet, and I spent most of that night browsing on my phone instead of trying my chances with sleep.

-----

By the next morning sleeplessness had me awake much later than usual, but unfortunately still early enough to be the first one up for breakfast. As was the rule, it was my duty to warm a plate of leftover hash browns over the stove while I flipped through every article on ghosts I could find with my other hand. Having spent the night thoroughly scouring Wikipedia for pages on ghosts, I was obviously an expert of the paranormal and prepared to make an educated guess on what this creature was. Actually I wasn't, but all that Google-fu had given me an idea of where to start.

See, ghosts tend to show up primarily for two reasons. Either they're attached to a living loved one and there to protect them and keep them company, or they were horribly killed and itching to warn others and seek revenge. Personally I'm no Sherlock Holmes, but given that Yukon and I weren't exactly intimate and that a nocturnal shadow creature was lurking in my flat, I guessed it was the latter. That would mean that to get to the bottom of this, I'd have to figure out exactly how he died.

For starters, let me tell you what I know about Yukon. I actually didn't know him or my other roommate, Bliss, until a week before we moved into our home sometime last year. The three of us had met through some website where young, unattached individuals could find roommates before moving to a new town to cut down on rent. As luck would have it, I was matched with two others from two other corners of the world. I had grown up in the northwest, Yukon was a son of our hockey-loving northern neighbours (although not from the territory of his namesake), and Bliss had spent some time everywhere from Europe to Peru. The only things we had in common were that we had all moved to a strange town with no connections whatsoever and that I think we all had some small amount of Hispanic heritage. Somehow the three of us ended up in a small two story in what seemed to be the bastard child of a yuppie town and an oversized farmer's market. But hey, at least the rent was cheap.

Thinking back about the days before the death was surprisingly easy. You'd think it would be easy, but it usually isn't. Try thinking about what you did two weeks ago and I guarantee you'd be hard pressed to remember anything. Too much happens in one day, let alone a week for most of us to recall any details. Fortunately for me, my life was boring. A week after helping each other carry furniture to our respective rooms, we were all on good terms and had adopted the most necessary evil of adulthood: a routine.

Every morning they'd go to their jobs and every day I'd work a little on my recordings in my studio and a lot on my waistline in the kitchen. What else does a single man in his twenties do when he's home alone all day? Other than the obvious things that don't need to be mentioned of course. Besides, Bliss was a good cook and I wasn't going to let all that talent go to waste.

Anyways, what I was getting at wasn't the monotony of a routine, but the ease of remembering everything outside it. In the days before Yukon's death, I there was only one real peculiarity: missing potatoes. Let me preface this before you think I'm crazy, but yes, I count my potatoes. Or rather, our potatoes. Yukon was a farmhand and he wasn't afraid to take his work home with him. If you haven't already guessed, he worked on a potato farm. Now, to be a successful foley artist, you had to work with whatever you had at hand and in my case that happened to be potatoes.

The nice thing about potatoes is that you can plant them all in one field and, like people, they all grow up different. Different size, different shape, and most importantly different acoustics. Naturally I had to keep track of which one made which sound and Bliss was constantly raiding the potato locker for ingredients so I did the only sensible thing to do. I numbered them. Each and every potato coming in and out was numbered and recorded into a ledger. Yeah, you heard that right. A potato ledger. And the only significant thing I can remember is that a few days before Yukon died, someone or something had been taking potatoes without using the ledger.

Other than that, I can't remember anything else being different. The night before Yukon died was exactly like every other weekday night. Bliss was frying the potato skins from whatever potato dish she had cooked earlier in the day like she did most nights. Yukon had had his fill and went to bed early in order to be up for the early farm work that he would never get to do. Bliss and I followed soon after and the next morning was a shit show. We didn't know how to contact his family if he had any left and none of us had really made any friends in town other than each other. He was in a box in the living room for a day before we were able to get him a plot. Funeral plans aren't really the kind of thing a young adult has on his mind, especially when he's getting daily exercise on a farm and eating nothing but fresh grown produce. I still remember the big Canadian laying in his makeshift casket. He always had a yellow undertone beneath his farmer's tan, but it was a lot more prominent when the other colours were drained away by death. After that we buried him and after that he decided to come back.

-----

Bliss was a good listener and I had already told her about the voices. As always she gave me the benefit of the doubt but she was visibly concerned when I mentioned what I had seen, probably more so for my sanity than about the creature.

"Dude, I think you need to calm down and apply some critical thinking here. Our roommate just died in this house. It's creepy as fuck and you're upset. We both are. And like it or not, he's never coming back and you're not the only one that misses him. Why would he haunt YOU when I was always the most attractive roommate anyways?"

"I'm being serious Bliss. Maybe he's trying to tell me something. Something only I would understand. Maybe because he knew I'd remember something the potatoes that you wouldn't."

"Or maybe I've been leaving for work every morning and you still haven't left the building he died in after two whole weeks. You should really get some fresh air already before Yukon decides he needs to expand his vocabulary."

She had a point. It wasn't healthy staying inside. We buried his body but I still had to get around to burying him in my head after he died so quickly. I know, cliché, but advice has to have some truth to it before becoming a proverb. Bliss was polishing off the rest of the hash browns while chopping up what I assume would later be lunch.

"I know, I need to get some exercise too anyways. It'll have to be tomorrow though since I still have some recordings to finish."

Bliss knew me well enough to see through my excuse and it showed. I was going to play detective and she was going to hear all about it when she got home.

"Seriously though," I said, "what if it really is him? If people can come back from the grave, why would he come back for me?"

"Maybe he really liked you." Bliss was just humouring me at this point and I knew I wasn't going to get anywhere.

"Because a couch potato who eats potatoes is especially likeable, isn't that right?"

"Don't drag yourself through the spud," she said, laughing at her own lack of tact, "Lots of people like you. Or at least they'd never have a reason to hate you. You're like, complete white-bread."

I actually took a bit of offense to being called plain by a woman who cooked the same vegetable for three meals a day, but to be fair I also ate everything she made. No, the real funny thing was that I was a lot further from white than she was.

"Yeah, I think you need to get your eyes checked if I'm 'white-bread' to you," I said, pushing my arm against hers. I was as brown as the potatoes we ate and her skin was practically red compared to mine.

She flicked a piece of potato peel in my direction, "The only eyes I need to check are these!"

"Wow, let me guess. Mashed potatoes for lunch again?"

"No, no. These are for tomorrow. Tomorrow we're having fries."

Fries sounded perfect. That's what I needed. A change in the routine. Maybe she was right and I was just imagining things. Maybe it wouldn't be too bad with just the two of us left.

"I don't think you've ever made fries. Are you sure they're going to be any good?"

"Oh, it's going to be so good. We haven't had fries because you're not the only one with supernatural secrets. I've been saving myself. Mashed potatoes are foreplay. Fries are my fucking baby."

Well, there went the thought of losing weight. I didn't want to keep her any later for work than she already was, so I decided to head to the studio. Maybe getting back to work was just what I needed. After all, it seemed to be working for Bliss.

"Sure they are. Anyways, I'm going off to record before my expectations for your fries get any higher. See you later, Bliss."

"See you later, Russ!"

-----

Most of that day was actually fairly productive. I probably would have given it all a rest and maybe even have went for a walk if I wasn't so meticulous with my work. Around noon I was just about done with my client's recording. In fact he probably would have used the effects I made and even some of my spoken lines without my second pass, but I just had to double check. Everything was good except for one sound at the end of one clip. It was a bit flat. I needed maybe one, two more millimetres of potato girth to really nail it and I wasn't going to rest until I had.

The potato locker was the same as it always had been. It was actually a cold room meant for moonshine and preserves and whatever else an old farmer would have kept before his town was gentrified and put up for sale online in pieces. None of us really drank or canned though, so when the cupboards were all spilling over with surplus spuds, Yukon starting throwing them into the cold room. Bliss called it our 'stupid potato locker' and the name stuck. It wasn't until I reached for the handle that I could have sworn I heard the faintest whisper from some corner of the house daylight never reached.

"Potato."

Fucking hell. I should have took it as a sign and left. I should have dropped everything, sent the email off to my client, and went for a nice refreshing walk while I waited for my payment to come through. Then I could have taken a breather with that money. Maybe have left town with Bliss and eaten something a little less starchy in a town that wasn't this one. But I didn't. I had to nail that sound and I had to see what I was least expecting to have seen behind that door.

I saw potatoes.

I'm not kidding when I say I was shocked. I saw potatoes, but not the potatoes I was expecting to see. There were more potatoes now. More than there were when Yukon had died even after accounting for all the ones Bliss had taken. The thing is, these weren't the potatoes that had gone missing. I was sure of it. And no, before you ask, I do not remember the shape and size of every potato we own. Yeah, they're defect potatoes because the ones left for the farmhands are the ones people don't like to buy. They're all shaped funny and none of them are perfectly round, but they taste fine and the variety is perfect for finding the right sounds. But we go through hundreds in a month. I may count potatoes but I'm not insane. No, I know these aren't the ones because I knew exactly where they came from. All of these 'new' potatoes had one thing in common. They had a hole drilled into them with an auger.

And how do I know it was an auger?

I drilled those holes. Yeah, let that sink in for a moment. Connect the dots. Young, single male with plenty of free time and few outlets for his 'masculinity' to shine. Read the title of this text if you haven't already. That's right. I wouldn't be mentioning it here or at all if I didn't think it was important, but there's no covering up clues when you're looking for an answer. Let me explain.

It started a few months after we'd moved in and I had already been accustomed to the omnipresence of potatoes in my life by then. I was just getting the hang of incorporating them into my sound routines when I came across a tune from a site I was on. It was one of those royalty free songs you could sample. Extremely catchy, but with no lyrics or instruments I could recognize. There was a melody, but I couldn't figure out what was making that sound. I was just looking for inspiration so I didn't want to just copy the song outright, but I wanted to replicate whatever it was that was used to make it. You know how I just couldn't resist getting one more potato to really get that sound effect down? This was a thousand times worse. I was obsessed. Yukon would have buried me in the potato fields if he had known how many taters I wasted on that song.

A week later, I was scouring that site again for clues when I got my only lead. A new recording, also anonymous, but the same length as the first song. You'd think it was a coincidence, but it was just the opposite. The same melody, just as irresistibly repeatable in my head as the first time I had heard it. Only this time it had lyrics.

"Potato Fuck, Potato Fuck, Potato Fuck-er."

The voice was alien. I, with all of my vocal training and techniques, could not replicate what I heard. No man could have sung those words in that timbre.

"Potato Fuck, Potato Fuck, Potato Fuck-er."

I know now that I shouldn't have been, but I was furious. Weeks of searching and trying ended in nothing but more mysteries and no hope of ever reaching a resolution. I was doomed to pursue that sound forever or give up, and both options were equally unacceptable. All that effort and nothing to show of it but a pile of mutilated potatoes. Holes and chambers and cuts scarred each and every one of them in a vain attempt to drop pitch or raise volume. I was mad at them, but I was also frustrated with my own inability. So what do you do when you're too angry at something to continue? You say, 'fuck it'. And I did.

"Potato Fuck, Potato Fuck, Potato Fuck-er."

It wasn't something I would normally have done. I think it had something to do with the song. It was intoxicating. Probably the stupidest lyrics you could have put on such an enchanting song, but I suppose they weren't that stupid because they made me listen. I never did figure out what made those sounds, and I probably never would because the song had been taken off the site by the next time I checked, but I had my relief. Days of fruitless struggle ended in nothing but a literal climax and a dirty secret I knew I could not shake.

That's why I started numbering them. If I numbered them, I'd be in control. I'd fill out the ledger, but only I'd know how many potatoes there really were. I hid 'my' potatoes well. You get careless when you're alone all day, and on more than one occasion Bliss or Yukon had been a knock or two away from catching me with my harem of carb-loaded lovers. They were my closest friends and I would NOT let them find out. So I forged the books. I took my share and numbered the rest. No one ever knew where I kept my taters. No one until now.

-----

"God, work was hell today."

No sooner than she had entered, she had thrown off her jacket and swapped it for an apron. You'd think she was overworking herself with how little time she spent between the front door and the kitchen. I of all people can understand her motives. Cooking potatoes wasn't work for her, it was her passion. You don't get tired like you do at work when you're doing your passion. I knew the feeling well, only what she did with potatoes was a lot more wholesome than my passions.

"Yeah? I think I was pretty productive."

I wasn't lying, but she could definitely tell I wasn't entirely content with the day's events. There were only three people who could have found those potatoes. Four including myself, but why would I have moved them into the locker? I'm not crazy. I just fuck potatoes. It had to have been Yukon, that creature, or Bliss. I really hoped it wasn't Bliss. I had already lost one roommate and wasn't about to drive away another with my perversions. But on the other hand, if it was her, why put them back in the locker? Would that mean she's okay with my habits? I had to find out but I didn't know how to bring it up.

"Russ, is everything okay? What happened?"

"Nothing! I'm fine. Why do you ask?"

"Dude, you're as pale as mashed potatoes. Your skin looks like fucking flour. If I didn't know how little you showered I'd bake you up and eat you."

Very funny. To be fair, I hadn't exactly been mobile enough to ever break a sweat, and I wasn't all too comfortable with the bathroom being so close to Yukon's room. Still, that reminded me of one thing. Bliss had a real sick sense of humour. I wouldn't be surprised if she found the potatoes and wanted to screw with me the way I had screwed with our staple food. No, I had to know if she knew. I WANTED her to know. Scratch that, I wanted her to be like ME. God, what if she was as messed up as I was? Those lyrics echoed in my skull. 'Potato Fuck, Potato Fuck, Potato Fuck-er. Potato Fuck, Potato Fuck, Potat-'

"Russet! Is everything okay?! Talk to me!"

"Yes! Yeah. Everything is okay. I'm just a little frazzled. I uh, I was working on my sounds and I couldn't get this one effect just right."

"And let me guess. You just had to grab another potato from the locker. You know, just for the sound. Not at all to investigate your friend's death and hunt for ghosts and creatures and entertain your potato-centric delusions while you stew in your own grief. And you're going to tell me you saw something weird."

I didn't respond. There wasn't much more to say than that.

"Russ, you need to let go. Stop going in that locker. Leave the house and get some air already. You sent your recordings in today, right?"

She scooped a steaming pile of potato skins onto my plate. I didn't feel like eating, but she was right and I didn't want her on my case over food when it was already painfully evident I was wasting away in my studio all day and neglecting all of my needs. They almost tasted bitter on the surface instead of their usual saltiness, but it was superficial and gave way to the same layer of flaky, buttery starch we had every night.

"I did."

"Good. Then you can stop worrying and get some rest. Do whatever it is you do when you're not working on your sounds. What do you do all day when you aren't working anyways?"

I wasn't about to answer that.

"And," she said, smiling like she was going to reveal the biggest surprise of the day, "guess what, Russ."

"What?"

"We're going to have fries tomorrow."

-----

I fell asleep quickly that night. Thinking back, it may have been all the stress. Stress keeps you awake for a few nights. It keeps you at just the right level of fear and discomfort to ensure you're alert. Alert enough for the threat to pass. Then, like any other stimulant, you crash. You crash hard enough to sleep through your dead roommate repeating the name of a tuber while dreaming of eating fries with your other, less dead roommate in the morning. But you don't crash hard enough to sleep through monsters. So you can imagine my disappointment when I woke up.

"POTATO."

That was it. The last word he uttered, just like last night. Loud. Urgent. Everything it needed to be to ease me out of the comfort of the illusion that I wasn't being haunted. The worst part was I wasn't just being haunted by a ghost, but by a need. How a potato farmhand's disembodied soul could convey that level of meaning in a single word, I didn't know. Yet what I did know what that I had to check the locker and I had to do it NOW.

I'll spare you the details of my investigation of the potato locker. It ends exactly the way you expect it to. I see the creature again. Like every other night dwelling horror, it disappears too quickly for me to get a proper look. It was still the same dark sheet over a shape I could not place. At least I saw one more detail though. The lumps. It was definitely 'human', at least in stature and movement. It stayed low, rose on what I imagine to be two legs, and ran away down the hall. I probably could have caught it if I tried, but you can't blame me for not trying. Not after I saw what was just beneath that fake cloth skin. Lumps. Hundreds of them. Moving, rolling unfixed. I didn't see them directly, but I saw their shape through the sheet. They were each roughly the size of, you guessed it, a potato.

That's not the worst thing though. Remember that sound it made the first time? I finally remembered what it reminded me of. The first time I was almost caught. I had finished up my recording for the day and started messing around with one of my potatoes. Okay, maybe more than a few. Splurging on a little luxury after a hard day's work. That's how I justified it. I still remember the small heart attack I had when Bliss knocked on the door moments after I finished. I hoped so hard that she didn't hear me through the door, but a part of me wondered if she had. I was startled though, and I knocked all my potatoes onto the floor. That was the sound. A few dozen spuds raining onto the floor in sequence. Whatever that THING was, I knew what at least part of it was. I wish I still thought they were footsteps.

It gets worse still, or maybe better for all of you sadists waiting to read how I was mauled or terrified by a disfigured potato person. No, the really terrifying stuff was what it left behind. I know there's probably better ways of describing what it left, but I don't think there's anything more descriptive than calling it what it was. Ectoplasm.

Clear, viscous fluid pooling over even more new potatoes. These weren't the ones from my stash. They were the stolen ones but with one key difference. A single hole auger-drilled into the heart of every tater. Just the right size, only I didn't do it. I swear, it wasn't me this time. I hadn't engaged in any 'potato shenanigans' since the whole ghost thing came into full swing. Can't say I wasn't tempted though. Whatever that goo was, it smelled just like that song. Yes, let me reassure you, I'm sane. They obviously didn't share any superficial qualities. One of them was a song some stranger had put out on the internet and the other was the paranormal drippings of a misshapen monster. Both weird, sure, but not alike at all other than how they made me feel.

Actually, neither that song nor that goo made me feel. Not the way you normally feel things. No, they made me want. They skipped the nervous system chain of command and went straight up to HQ. They made me WANT those potatoes. The song was alien, but that fluid was familiar. Once again, I couldn't place what it was. You never figure these things out when you need to. All I knew was it was sweet. It smelled so sweet. But also musty. Like somewhere that wasn't aired as often as it should be. And I had smelled it before. And it was SO sweet. And it made want to FUCK those potatoes.

Really? I was going to start doing that THEN? Under the watchful eyes of my dead, repetitive roommate? With some crossbreed of spud and beast running around mocking my addictions? Surrounded by our primary food source and with a moist handful of creature residue?

No, of course not. I told you, I'm sane. But fuck if I didn't want to.

-----

I woke up with a hangover the next day. Not a real hangover. Like I said, none of us really drank. I didn't that night either, but I had spent the last few hours drunk on fear and hormones and grief and every other human emotion a distressed potato violator could imbibe in his sleep. And when I woke up, I had a headache. Worse, I had a stomach ache. I had to tell Bliss to avoid the washroom that morning lest she get reacquainted with yesterday's potato skins.

I emptied myself too many times from too many orifices that morning. You can imagine Bliss told me to seriously get some fresh air and I was all too happy to get away from what I'd left in that toilet. I'll spare you the details on this one too.

She was cooking chips when I came downstairs. No fries yet apparently.

"This is my warm up. I need a warm up before I get things perfect. I told you it's going to be perfect! Fries are my baby!"

Man, did I want those fries. But they weren't ready and they weren't what I needed yet. It was time to finally get that fresh air and I knew exactly where I needed to go. I needed to visit Yukon.

You'd probably call us disrespectful for what we did with his body. Everything was legal of course, and it wasn't exactly against his wishes or anything. It was unorthodox though. We weren't rich and we weren't expecting to bury anyone that year or even that decade. Thankfully Yukon wasn't afraid to joke about death. I guess years of recurring nightmares give you a morbid sense of humour. He always said he wanted to be buried in the potato fields and we didn't have any other reasonable ideas so we obliged him. I thought he'd have found it funny actually. The biggest joke of all was that he ended up getting his wish. We talked to his boss about getting a permit for burial on private property and we offered him some cash which he refused. Yukon was a good farmer and he assured us even in death he'd help the crops grow. The only issue was that potatoes are root vegetables so for sanitary reasons we had to plant him under some other plants instead. I think we chose some beans because they had nice flowers and then we buried him and that was that.

Or at least until he came back and that THING showed up. That was that then, and now it was time to dig my roommate up and beg his corpse for answers.

I arrived at the field later than I'd hoped. I was out of shape and it showed, but Yukon wasn't exactly going anywhere. It was even later than I'd hoped when I was able to feel his body through the soil. The whole six feet thing isn't actually standard, especially without a proper team of gravediggers. It was more like two. Two feet doesn't sound like much, but it's a lot harder than it looks and a lot harder still when you're cutting through bean roots with every scoop. I knew I was getting close when I started to register the smell.

He didn't smell bad. That was the first disgusting part. Two weeks to the day we put him in this hole and he didn't smell bad. He didn't smell the same either. Brawny, work-loving farmhands don't have the subtlest of smells, but this was different. If I wasn't looking at a dead man in a hole I might have gotten hungry. I had skipped this morning's chips. My stomach had been empty all day. Yukon smelled like butter. Not buttered, rancid meat stewing in a pit. Just butter. He even looked a bit like butter now that his skin had started to slough off and his yellowness was coming to surface. He fell apart like butter too. That was the second part.

Not all of him was soft. He still had the same potato hauling limbs and potato eating jaws. They were still firm. Not flexed of course, but firm enough to hold their shape the way a piece of raw meat doesn't immediately fall apart on the cutting board. The soft part was his belly. It was almost liquid. Like something had been eating at him from the inside, clawing to the surface just under his skin. They felt like fingers just barely able poke through his decaying skin. Sort of like pencils pressed against the surface of a balloon full of liquefied butter. I had a feeling I knew what they were. He was telling me what they were but I had to be sure. I had to pop the balloon. He was telling me the whole time.

"POTATO."

Yukon's guts spilled into my hands. I think they were his guts. They were barely solid anymore. They probably wouldn't have been solid if they hadn't been strung together like some disgusting giblet necklace. Those fingers scratching through what was left of his skin? They were sprouts. His innards were laced up with roots. That was when I realised how he'd died. His stomach, before it had ruptured and tenderized the rest of his organs, was filled to the brim with potato skins. Bright, green, inedible potato skins. Mildly toxic in small amounts. Lethal in the quantity Yukon could consume after hours of physical labour.

I had to go home. I had to know why. I was hungry. We were having fries.

-----

It was dark by the time I'd arrived home. I didn't smell anything cooking, not even potato skins like I'd come to expect every evening. She wasn't anywhere on the first floor. I think she knew where I had gone. Why else would I have been out so long? I hate walking, especially long distances outside. It was useful however. She was right about that fresh air. On my way back I'd developed a few hunches about our situation. In fact, I knew exactly where she'd be when I got back.

I felt sick going up the stairs. Sure, I was winded from walking so far after two weeks of sedentary life. I was nervous too. How could you be anything but when you're climbing up to confront a murderer in your own home? That explained the dizziness. But it didn't explain the cold. It didn't explain why it felt like every fibre of muscle in my body felt like staying still to conserve heat. Staying still to conserve what little energy I had left. Only one thing could explain that.

Green potato skins. Small amounts at first. Solanine building up in our bodies every night. Ever so slowly increasing in dosage until we stored a fatal dose. Killing us with our own preoccupations with potatoes and routines. Yukon first, then me. To what end, I didn't know. But it had to end now. No more carting off potatoes to water while we slept. No more of Bliss' midnight nightshade snacks. The moment I didn't find her in the kitchen, I knew everything I had to know.

Halfway up the stairs, I realised all of my hunches were wrong. Bliss was more than just a murderer.

"Potato Fuck, Potato Fuck, Potato Fuck-er."

I don't know how I did it on an empty stomach, but I puked all over those stairs. Hearing that song again messed me up more than Yukon yelling the same word at the top of his lungs into my skull fourteen nights in a row. I know what I am. I do what I do to help put that memory away. That's what it is. A MEMORY. A song stuck in my head the way Yukon is. Not a song I'm supposed to be hearing in my HOUSE. And definitely not in my goddamn potato locker.

I listened to that song hundreds of times in the weeks it was available to me. I listened to it thousands of times more in my head when I was alone. It only went away when I wasn't. I was NEVER alone when I had my potatoes. And yet even after repeat after mental repeat, I learned more about that song on those stairs than I ever had before. I told you I'm a sound guy. I told you no man could have that voice. Let me tell you no sane woman could either.

"POTATO FUCK, POTATO FUCK, POTATO FUCK-ER."

There was always something off. Something I hadn't been hearing right in the lyrics. It didn't occur to me what that was until I realised who had sung it. Tired, hungry, couch potato me with all the neurotoxin in my veins could have ran away for hours from that door in that moment. It would have been easy. If only I didn't smell the smell too. If only it didn't make the WANT come back. I swear I've never wanted to FUCK a potato more than I wanted to open that door. And when I did, she didn't speak in her voice. No, she spoke in THAT voice.

"RUSSET, WE'RE HAVING FRIES TONIGHT."

I opened the door. She was waiting for me. But she wasn't waiting to kill me. She looked more like I should have killed her instead. Under that black veil was what looked like a writhing mass of potatoes. She kicked it off too quickly for me to protest. The SMELL filled the room. The sweet, musty, SMELL wafted off of her body. Her distended belly, bursting full with potatoes hung over the others she could not fit within her. Potato eyes, cut from their parents' flesh and embedded into every pore of her's. Stretching her skin raw. Stretching it red.

This is how she watered them. She used her fluids. She used ALL her fluids. In the middle of her throat, jutting out beneath the skin not unlike Yukon's belly, I saw the source of her voice. Chips, jammed into every fold of her larynx. Weaved into every vocal chord she could reach. Under her eyelids too. And of course, there was the potato with the hole. It was shoved EXACTLY where you'd expect it to be.

"WE'RE HAVING FRIES TONIGHT, RUSSET."

She was smiling. She was right.

"FRIES IS OUR BABY."

My knees locked. Whether from fear or paralysis I can't remember. I can't remember what happens next. I can only remember the SMELL. I can only remember the LYRICS.

"POTATO FUCK, POTATO FUCK, POTATO FUCK HER."