Hot Revenge Box Set 4

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…

openings, more scratching.

into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

I come equipped with fists

*****

know what Stockholm

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

a kidnap or hostage situation, the prisoner

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. It's called Lima syndrome, where the

“So?”

I your

a brigadeiro. A flake of chocolate cracks off the small round cake, dropping back into the

you keep

her chewing, mouth hanging a

do you keep coming? If all you wanted was to watch me rot, you have your camera there.” I

me to feed you? We

could leave me a bag of potatoes and come once a week. Or

simply regarding me. I continue. “Am I your only friend, Sola? Is that it? You've murdered everyone else that might get close to

her head, giggling. “So, you're my

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

back in her seat, arches her brows. “I am

say otherwise? I'm not claiming to have changed. Who ever really changes?” I

“Solana…” she hisses.

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 the heavy make-up, her colour has changed. White-faced, white-lipped, scarlet spots at her

on her heel, she stalks

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 light winks

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

delicacy is almost untouched, only a single bite taken from the

anything like this for…

For how long?

no idea. Weeks? Months? My sense of time is out of the

had a

then another,

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

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