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

enough into an abyss, the abyss will

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

comes equipped with teeth and whiskers. I come equipped with

*****

do you know what Stockholm syndrome

eyes. She takes something from her lunchbox, unwrapping one of her usual

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

you're

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 captor

“So?”

your

brigadeiro. A flake of chocolate cracks off the small round cake, dropping back into the napkin and she dabs it up with a fingertip

why do you keep coming

pauses in her chewing, mouth hanging a

If all you wanted was to watch me rot, you have your camera there.”

to feed you. I assume you do want me to feed

me a bag of potatoes and come once a week. Or even, once a month. But, so far as I

I your only friend, Sola? Is that it?

giggling. “So,

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

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

not claiming to have changed. Who ever really changes?” I raise my gaze again, look into her face. “Have you changed

“Solana…” she hisses.

and scatter over the rancid concrete, some of it dropping just this side of that painted line, now less than white. Even

her heel, she stalks

the chain snaps taut, I snatch up the discarded meal from the filthy concrete, scrabbling to grab broken fragments of meat in one

eyes adjust to the green blink of the camera. It hardly

single bite taken from the corner. And I have half of a

anything like this

For how long?

My sense of

had a

empanada, then another, I ram the food

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

gagging on my scavenged meal, I barf it up, where it

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