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…

down gunmen, soldiers,

It’s just a rat…

more scratching. And a nose pokes

long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

teeth and whiskers. I come equipped with fists and feet.

*****

you know what Stockholm

takes something from her lunchbox, unwrapping one of her usual dainties from a napkin. “What is

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

you're getting attached to

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 friend,

of chocolate cracks off the

why do you keep coming

chewing, mouth hanging a

watch me rot, you have your camera there.” I jerk my chin up to the

have to feed you. I assume you do want me to feed you? We can always

were the only reason, you could leave me a bag of potatoes and come once

not speaking, simply regarding me. I continue. “Am I your only friend, Sola? Is that it? You've murdered

swings her head, giggling. “So, you're

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 up potatoes

her seat, arches her brows.

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

“Solana…” she hisses.

mouth working, she says no more. Instead, she stands, the lunchbox tumbling from her 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. Even under

on her heel, she

discarded meal from the filthy concrete, scrabbling to grab broken fragments of meat in one hand, a cake with the other before, with a click, the

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

taken from the corner. And I have half

eaten anything like this

For how long?

Months? My sense of time is out of

had a

another, I

wrong way and suddenly I’m no longer eating, but coughing and choking

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

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