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

It’s just a rat…

dark openings, more scratching. And a

if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

case, the abyss comes equipped with teeth and whiskers. I come equipped with fists and feet. Between us, we settle an uneasy

*****

you know

lunchbox,

where, in a kidnap or hostage situation, the prisoner

you're getting

Don't misread me...” Her head tilts. She pretending mockery, but I have her attention. “… But there's a reverse condition.

“So?”

I your only

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 napkin

you keep coming

chewing, mouth hanging a little

you keep coming? If all you wanted was to watch me rot, you have your

want me to feed you? We can always change that

and come once a

your only friend, Sola?

swings her head, giggling. “So, you're my friend are

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 all the others you did the same to. You’ve not changed. And

sits back in her seat, arches her brows. “I am making you

I say otherwise? I'm not claiming to have changed. Who ever really changes?” I raise my gaze again, look into

“Solana…” she hisses.

the rancid concrete, some of it dropping

heel,

taut, I snatch up the discarded meal from the

adjust to the green blink of the camera. It hardly matters. My attention

bite taken from the corner.

eaten anything like this for…

For how long?

idea. Weeks? Months? My sense

I had a

of empanada, then another, I ram the food into my

much. Too soon. Half-chewed pulp goes down the wrong way and

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

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