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,

It’s just a rat…

dark openings, more scratching. And a nose pokes

gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

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

*****

know what

takes something from her lunchbox, unwrapping

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

you're getting attached

misread me...” Her head tilts. She pretending mockery, but I have her attention. “… But there's a reverse condition. It's

“So?”

your only friend,

think you’re my friend?” The napkin produces a brigadeiro. A flake of chocolate cracks off the small round cake, dropping back into the napkin and she

do you keep

in her chewing, mouth

coming? If all you wanted was to watch me rot,

want me

come once a week. Or even, once a month. But, so far as I can reckon, you're here every day

simply regarding me. I continue. “Am I your only friend, Sola? Is that it?

head, giggling. “So,

You've not changed, Larry. I can see right through

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

to have changed. Who ever really changes?” I raise my gaze again, look into her face. “Have

“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,

heel,

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

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

delicacy is almost untouched, only a single bite taken from the corner. And I

anything like this

For how long?

Months? My sense of time is out of the

had a

of empanada, then another,

way and

gagging on my scavenged meal, I barf it up, where

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