By Tim Sweeney
Editor

Rupert Burbank had always been a peculiar boy. In fact, it was almost immediately after he began eating solid foods that his mother noticed his aversion to most anything and everything. He would spit out peas, turn his head at ham, and cry at carrots and corn. There was only one food that could appease young Rupert: the potato. When his mother first served him a tiny spoonful of mashed potatoes she watched in awe as a look of calm fell over Rupert’s young round face, and she could have sworn a sort of glaze rolled over his eyes as a smile crept from ear to ear. The smile remained on his face as he chewed and he seemed to gaze dreamily into the distance. She was relieved to have found that the boy did indeed enjoy at least one food, but there was something about his behavior which she found slightly off-putting, and so she would joke to herself “my little spud junkie” as she put the spoon to his eager lips.

And so things carried on this way throughout Rupert’s childhood. His mother had done some research and found that potatoes are, despite common perception, very nutritious. They are higher in potassium than the famed banana, a great source of vitamin C, and contain not a single gram of fat or sodium. In fact, she found that a human can actually survive on a diet of potatoes so long as there is a source of dairy to compliment them. And so Rupert did. It was milk and potatoes for every meal. As he grew his appetite for potatoes became more and more voracious, and his loving mother catered to her little spud junkie day after day. He was, after all, her only child and so she felt that he should have all that he wanted. But at times she did feel a bit concerned. Normal boys like to play with toy trucks and action figures and footballs, but not Rupert. Rupert only played with potatoes. He would beg for one or two before his mother would cook them, and then run off with them to his room where he would make believe them into characters who spoke potato languages only he could understand. Sometimes he would refuse to give them back to his mother and when asked why he would shout “because you can’t cook my only friends!”

Young Rupert did have trouble making friends, and it worried his mother so. He had grown into quite a plump and lumpy young man, as he had begun to enjoy the other things which compliment potatoes: butter, cheese, sour cream and even bacon. He stayed indoors as much as he could, and he had a certain pallor about him which combined with a yellowish undertone that implied a mild jaundice. His mother said it was too many Yukon Golds. He had developed moles that stuck out, often called skin tags, and they were strewn randomly about his unsightly body and face. His face had grown large and round with puffy cheeks and sallowness hung around his brown eyes. Oh how his mother felt badly for him. She once had refused to let him play with potatoes for two weeks to encourage him to find some people friends. Not long after she noticed strange sprouts coming from her potted plants. She uprooted them to find Rupert had planted potatoes he had stashed away in order to “make some new friends”. And so not knowing what to do, his mother gave him a pot of his own to grow a few potatoes in. Sometimes she would peer out from another room so quietly and worrisome and lovingly as he sat by his pot rocking back and forth waiting for his friends to grow. “My little spud junkie” she would whisper under her breath with hopeless eyes and one hand against her worried cheek.

Rupert Burbank’s father had passed away not long before Rupert was born. It was an unfortunate hiking accident which left Rupert and his mother alone in a large house tucked away in the woods. He had slipped off of a steep cliff on the side of a mountain which was a day’s drive from their house. Once a year Rupert and his mother would go to visit the site of his death and she would bring gladiolas to lay along the rocks because they were his favorite flower. This year however, Rupert had gotten fairly ill and requested to stay home now that he was old enough to be on his own for a day or so. His mother worried but thought that she could use some time alone and that the independence might be good for Rupert. So she went alone. When she came back she walked into the house and went to Rupert’s room to see how he had faired on his own. She knocked on his door. Nothing. Again she knocked, still nothing. So she went in.

When she opened the door she found the room intact, except that oddly the dresser and television had disappeared and the blankets and sheets and pillows had been removed from the bed. She began to panic and ran downstairs screaming her son’s name. She paused for breath and heard a faint voice seemingly coming from the basement. She ran to the door and swung it open and nearly fainted when she saw Rupert coming up the stairs as calm as could be. “What are you doing in the basement?!” she asked, bewildered, and panting. “And where is your television and dresser and blankets?!” Rupert lazily looked up at her and stated simply, “I moved my room into the basement. I like the cool air down there, and it’s dark and damp how I like it too. And my friends that I’ve made do much better and live much longer down there too and they tell me they like it too.” His mother frowned and cocked her head to the side. “Oh Rupert, you know your friends are really only…” she paused and sighed, she was tired. “…I just am glad you’re okay my Rupert. When I saw your room I was so worried.” Rupert shrugged and said that he was very sorry and turned and went back down into the dark basement. There was an old musky couch down there dim lit by the blue light of the television and he went and laid down.  

Rupert’s mother worried for him but began to fall into a tired complacency. She knew her son was a strange boy but she loved him still and she just wanted him to be happy. It became easier to ignore it than try to change him. So she let him stay in the basement. At night she would hear strange noises and banging from downstairs. Rupert grew increasingly isolated as the months wore on. He grew paler and paler from his time in the basement, and he began gorging on more food than ever before. His stomach grew larger and more rotund. His eyes never seemed to focus on any one thing. One night she peered out of her window and in the moonlit backyard saw Rupert digging at the edge of the yard where the grass met a patch of woods. He was shoveling the dirt into a large bin and she watched as he dragged it back into the house. This continued for four nights until she had estimated that he had must have gathered hundreds of pounds of dirt. She didn’t ask questions. The truth was that she had become slightly afraid of her son as his behavior became more bizarre. He stopped talking almost all together. He began eating only raw potatoes, claiming that cooking them was torture. “I want to be like them” he would say. The loud noises at night continued for some time.

Suddenly the noises one night stopped. She had grown so accustomed to the strange banging and knocking that the silence rang in Rupert’s mother’s ears as loud as thunder. Something in her began to grow worried and she laid in bed unable to sleep. She thought of her poor Rupert and wondered why and when things had become so strange and what was she supposed to do? She laid in silence until the growing worry prompted her to get out of bed and go downstairs. Besides, she had been wondering just what it was that had been going on just under her nose inside her own house. She put her slippers on and walked down the stairs. As she got to the basement door something like fear welled inside her stomach. She wanted to turn around, but her curiosity overpowered her fear. What had he been digging up all that dirt for anyway? She opened the door and started down the stairs.

A deep musky smell of soil and earth filled her nostrils as she slowly made her way down. Halfway down she could see the blue glow of the television in Rupert’s little cove around the corner. “Rupert?” she whispered aloud. There was no reply. She got to the bottom of the stairs, turned the corner, and dropped to her knees. There in the dim light of the television was the old couch. Above the couch was a hanging wooden tub attached with ropes from the rafters of the basement, and it was overturned and had bits of dirt still hanging on the inner sides. The cushions had been removed from the couch and the area below them dug out and a tall wooden board had been placed and nailed across the front creating a sort of bathtub where the cushions had been. The tub was filled with dirt which had been dumped by pulley or lever from the tub above. From the dirt that now filled the old couch Rupert’s mother saw with wide eyes a jaundiced hand reaching out, the blue television light turning his yellow skin a sickly green like a stalk sprouting desperately from the cold damp soil.