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…

more scratching. And a nose pokes

an abyss, the abyss will gaze back

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

I come equipped with fists

*****

you know what

her eyes. She takes something from her lunchbox, unwrapping

the label for a psychological condition where, in a kidnap or hostage situation, the prisoner forms an attachment

saying you're getting attached to

But there's a reverse condition. It's called Lima syndrome, where the captor comes to empathise with the

“So?”

I your only friend,

A flake of chocolate cracks off the

why do you keep

in her chewing, mouth hanging a little open.

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

you. I assume you do want me to feed you? We

you could leave me a bag of potatoes and come once a week. Or even, once a

“Am I your only

swings her head, giggling. “So,

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

sits back in her seat, arches

otherwise? I'm not claiming to have changed. Who ever really

“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 painted line, now less than white. Even under the heavy make-up, her colour has changed. White-faced,

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

green blink of the camera. It hardly

meat-and-veg-stuffed delicacy is almost untouched, only a single bite taken from the corner. And I have

anything

For how long?

sense of time is out

I had a

another, I ram

down the wrong way and suddenly I’m no longer eating, but coughing

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

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