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…

more scratching. And a

gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

and whiskers. I come equipped

*****

do you know

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

where, in a kidnap or

you're getting

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 comes to empathise with

“So?”

I your only

my friend?” The napkin produces a brigadeiro. A flake of chocolate cracks off the small round cake, dropping

you keep

in her chewing, mouth hanging a little open.

keep coming? If all you wanted was to watch me rot, you have your camera there.” I jerk my chin up to the blinking

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

only reason, you could leave me a bag of potatoes and come once a

your only friend, Sola? Is that it?

giggling. “So, you're my

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 I’m going to make you

seat, arches her brows. “I am making you

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

“Solana…” she hisses.

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

her heel,

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

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

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

eaten anything like this for…

For how long?

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

I had a

empanada, then another, I ram the food into

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

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