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,

It’s just a rat…

more scratching. And a nose

an abyss, the abyss

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

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

*****

know what Stockholm syndrome

from her lunchbox, unwrapping one of her usual

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

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

“So?”

I your only friend,

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

why do you keep coming

chewing, mouth hanging

me rot, you have your camera there.”

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

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

not speaking, simply regarding me. I continue. “Am I your only friend, Sola? Is that it? You've murdered everyone else that might

giggling. “So, you're my friend are

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

in her seat, arches her brows. “I am

my eyes, I keep my voice mild. “Did I say otherwise? I'm not claiming to have changed. Who ever really

“Solana…” she hisses.

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

her heel, she

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

blink of the camera. It hardly

taken from the corner.

anything

For how long?

idea. Weeks? Months? My sense of time is out of

I had

empanada, then another, I ram

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

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

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