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

It’s just a rat…

the dark openings, more scratching. And a nose pokes

long enough into an abyss, the abyss

Who said that?

Nietzsche?

Depressing bastard…

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

*****

know what

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

a kidnap

you're getting attached to

Don't misread me...” Her head tilts. She pretending mockery, but I have her attention. “… But there's a reverse condition. It's called Lima syndrome, where

“So?”

your

A flake of chocolate cracks off the small round cake, dropping back into the napkin and she dabs it up

why do you keep

pauses in her chewing, mouth

me rot, you

have to feed you. I assume you do want me to feed you? We can always change that

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

chews and swallows, not speaking, simply regarding me. I continue. “Am I your only friend, Sola? Is that it?

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

at me, “You think someone's going to come and save 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

seat, arches her brows. “I

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

“Solana…” she hisses.

no more. Instead, 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

on her heel, she

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

blink of the camera. It hardly matters. My

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

anything

For how long?

idea. Weeks? Months? My sense of time

I had

empanada, then another, I ram the food into

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

swallow, gagging on my scavenged meal, I barf it up, where it plops in a saliva-coated

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