Hot Revenge Box Set 4

Chapter 52

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,

It’s just a rat…

dark openings, more scratching. And

gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

with teeth and whiskers. I come equipped with fists

*****

do you know

Interest flickers over her eyes. She takes something from her lunchbox,

label for a psychological condition where, in a kidnap

saying you're getting attached to

misread me...” Her head tilts. She pretending mockery, but I have her attention. “… But there's a reverse condition.

“So?”

your only friend,

skirts her lips. “Friend? You think you’re my friend?” The napkin produces a brigadeiro. A flake of chocolate cracks off the small round cake, dropping back into the

do you keep coming

in her chewing, mouth hanging a little open.

rot, you have

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

But if that were the only reason, you could leave me a bag of potatoes and come once a week.

regarding me. I continue. “Am I your only friend,

“So, you're

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 up potatoes for the rest of my life. Along with

seat, arches

my eyes, I keep my voice mild. “Did I say otherwise? I'm not claiming to have changed. Who ever really changes?” I raise my

“Solana…” she hisses.

rancid concrete, some of it dropping just this side of that painted

heel, she stalks

no supernatural premonition to know what's coming. Launching myself at the fallen food, ignoring 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

green blink of the camera. It hardly matters.

from the corner.

anything like this for…

For how long?

sense of time is out of

I had a

another, I ram the food into my

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

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

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