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

It’s just a rat…

openings, more scratching. And a nose pokes

you gaze long enough into an abyss,

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

equipped with teeth and whiskers. I come equipped with fists and feet.

*****

do you know what Stockholm syndrome

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

the label for a psychological condition where, in a kidnap or

saying you're getting attached

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

“So?”

I your only friend,

produces a brigadeiro. A flake of chocolate cracks off

why do you

her chewing, mouth

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

do want me

if that were the only reason, you could leave me a bag of potatoes and come once a week. Or even, once a month. But, so far as I

and swallows, not speaking, simply regarding me. I continue. “Am I your only friend,

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

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 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

in her seat, arches her

say otherwise? I'm not claiming to have changed.

“Solana…” she hisses.

from her lap. The contents spill and scatter 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

on her heel,

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,

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

bite taken from the corner. And

anything like this for…

For how long?

idea. Weeks? Months? My sense of time

I had a

of empanada, then another, I

Too soon. Half-chewed pulp goes down the wrong way and suddenly I’m no longer

to swallow, gagging on my scavenged meal, I barf it up,