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. And

gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

come equipped with fists and

*****

do you know

lunchbox, unwrapping one of her usual dainties from a napkin.

condition where, in a kidnap

you're

But

“So?”

I your only friend,

lips. “Friend? You think you’re my friend?” The napkin produces a brigadeiro. A flake of chocolate cracks off the

you keep

chewing, mouth hanging a little

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

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

I 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. But, so far as I can reckon, you're here every

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

head, giggling. “So,

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 potatoes for the rest of my life. Along with all the others you did the same to. You’ve not changed. And

seat, arches her brows. “I

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

“Solana…” she hisses.

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

her heel,

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 in one hand, a cake with the other before, with a click, the light winks out and I'm left in

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

delicacy is almost untouched, only a single bite taken from the corner. And I have half of a fruit

anything like this for…

For how long?

no idea. Weeks? Months? My sense of time

I had

of empanada, then another,

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

my scavenged meal, I barf it up,