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 nose

long enough into an abyss, the abyss will

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

whiskers. I come equipped with fists and feet. Between

*****

know

Interest flickers over her eyes. She 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 an attachment to

sniggers. “You saying you're getting

Her head tilts. She pretending mockery, but I have her attention. “… But there's a reverse condition. It's called Lima syndrome, where the captor comes to empathise with

“So?”

I your only

brigadeiro. A flake of chocolate cracks off

do you

mouth hanging a little open.

was to watch me rot, you have your camera there.” I jerk my

me to feed

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

I your only friend, Sola? Is that it? You've murdered everyone else that might get

head, giggling. “So, you're

a finger at me, “You think someone's going to come and save you, Larry? You 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

crosses her arms, sits back in her seat, arches

changed. Who ever really changes?” I raise my gaze

“Solana…” she hisses.

contents spill and scatter over the rancid concrete, some of it dropping

her heel,

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 in one hand, a cake with the other before, with a

blind, my eyes adjust to the green blink of the camera. It hardly matters. My attention is on the

taken from

eaten anything like this

For how long?

My sense of time is

I had a

in a mouthful of empanada, then another,

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

meal, I barf it up, where it plops

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