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…

faced down gunmen, soldiers,

It’s just a rat…

dark openings, more scratching. And a nose pokes

gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back at

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

whiskers. I come equipped with fists and feet. Between us, we settle an

*****

you know what

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

condition where, in a kidnap

you're getting attached

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

“So?”

your only friend,

chocolate cracks off the small round cake, dropping back into the napkin and

do you keep coming

pauses in her chewing, mouth hanging a

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

want me to feed

a bag of potatoes and come once a week. Or even, once a month. But, so far as I

“Am I your only friend, Sola? Is that

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

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

sits back in her seat,

I say otherwise? I'm not claiming to have changed. Who ever really changes?” I raise my gaze again,

“Solana…” she hisses.

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 at her

heel,

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

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

taken from the corner. And I have

not eaten anything like this

For how long?

sense of time

had a

another, I

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

scavenged meal, I barf it up, where it plops in

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