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…

scratching. And a nose

gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

whiskers. I come equipped with fists

*****

do you know what Stockholm syndrome

something from her lunchbox, unwrapping one of her usual dainties from a

where, in a kidnap or hostage

“You saying you're getting attached to

mockery, but I have her attention. “… But there's a reverse

“So?”

I your

chocolate cracks off the small round cake, dropping back into

why do you keep coming

in her chewing, mouth hanging

me rot, you have your camera

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

leave me a bag of potatoes and come once a week. Or even, once a month. But,

regarding me. I continue. “Am I your only friend, Sola? Is that it? You've murdered everyone

swings her head, giggling. “So, you're my friend

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 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

arms, sits back in her seat, arches her brows. “I am making

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

“Solana…” she hisses.

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 at her

on her heel, she stalks

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

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

a single bite taken from the

not eaten anything

For how long?

Weeks? Months? My sense of time is

had a

of empanada, then another,

wrong way and suddenly I’m

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

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