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…

openings, more scratching. And a

gaze long enough into an abyss, the

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

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

*****

do you know what

her lunchbox, unwrapping one of her usual dainties from

a kidnap or hostage situation, the prisoner

saying you're getting

but I have her attention. “… But there's a reverse condition. It's called Lima syndrome,

“So?”

I your only friend,

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

why do you keep

in her chewing, mouth

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

assume you do want me to feed you?

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

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

her head, giggling. “So, you're

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

crosses her arms, sits back in her seat, arches her brows. “I am making you

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

“Solana…” she hisses.

and scatter over the rancid concrete, some of it dropping just this side of that painted

on her heel,

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

the camera.

only a single bite taken from

not eaten anything like this for…

For how long?

idea. Weeks? Months? My sense of time

I had a

empanada, then another, I ram the

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

barf it up, where it plops

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