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.

gaze long enough into an abyss,

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

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

*****

do you know what Stockholm syndrome

lunchbox, unwrapping one of her

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

saying you're

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?”

your only friend,

skirts 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 back into the

do you keep coming

in her chewing, mouth hanging a little open.

wanted was to watch me rot, you have your camera there.” I jerk my chin up to the

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

come once a week. Or even, once a month. But, so far as I can reckon,

only friend, Sola? Is that it?

head, giggling. “So, you're my

a finger at me, “You think someone's going to come and 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

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

changed.

“Solana…” she hisses.

scatter over the rancid concrete, some of it dropping just

her heel, she

no supernatural premonition to 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

the green blink of the camera. It hardly matters. My attention is on the

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

anything like

For how long?

My sense of time is out of the

had

then another, I ram the

Half-chewed pulp goes down the wrong way and suddenly I’m no longer eating, but coughing and choking and

swallow, gagging on my scavenged meal, I barf it

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