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…

the dark openings, more scratching. And a

an abyss, the abyss will gaze

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

I come equipped with fists and feet.

*****

know what Stockholm

lunchbox, unwrapping one of her usual dainties from a napkin. “What is

kidnap or

saying you're

“… But there's a reverse condition. It's called

“So?”

I your only friend,

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

do you keep coming

pauses in her chewing, mouth hanging a little

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

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

that were the only reason, you could leave me a bag of potatoes and come once a week. Or

continue. “Am I your only friend, Sola? Is that

swings her head, giggling. “So,

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 not changed, Larry. I can see right through you. The same heartless bastard that

her arms, sits back in her seat, arches

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

“Solana…” she hisses.

she stands, the lunchbox tumbling from her lap. The contents spill and scatter over the rancid concrete, some of it dropping just this side of that

her heel, she

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

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

single bite taken from the corner.

eaten anything like this for…

For how long?

Months? My sense of time

I had a

a mouthful of empanada, then another, I

goes down the wrong way and suddenly I’m

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

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