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

It’s just a rat…

the dark openings, more scratching. And

enough into an

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

and whiskers. I come equipped with fists and feet.

*****

know what Stockholm

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

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

you're

her attention. “… But there's a reverse condition. It's called Lima syndrome, where the

“So?”

I your

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

do you keep coming

mouth hanging

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

want me to feed you? We can always change that

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 day or

your only

“So, you're

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 I’m going to make

back in her seat, arches her brows. “I

claiming to have changed. Who ever really changes?” I

“Solana…” she hisses.

scatter over the rancid concrete, some of it dropping just this side of that painted line, now less

her heel, she stalks

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

blink of the camera. It hardly matters. My attention is on the wealth in my

untouched, only a single bite taken from the corner. And I have

eaten anything

For how long?

idea. Weeks? Months? My sense of

had

empanada, then another, I ram the

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

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

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