How to Make Monsters Read Online Free PDF

announce that they’re a soft touch purely by the slant
of their mouth or a soft, vague light in their eyes.
    The sun was just setting, dragging
crimson-hued acid trails through an unusually low and heavy sky resigned to
dull grey for most of the day. The Spiker went quiet – he’s usually an
incessant talker – and we both just watched for a while, content to pass the
bottle between us in an easy, companionable silence.
    And that was when I saw it, out of
the corner of my eye. Later, I began to realise that was the only way to see
them: peripheral. If you look dead-on, you won’t see a thing.
    A visibly stressed young mother was
bending down to chastise her baby outside a betting shop, her tired face lurid
and mask-like in the lowering light. The baby was having a tantrum over some
silly incident that matters only to the very young, and the woman was obviously
at the end of her tether.
    As she bent to the pushchair,
delivering a rapid open-handed slap to the side of the child’s head and
screaming some indecipherable obscenity, a shadow crossed between her and the
subject of her disapproval. It was like a ripple in the air, a slight
distortion in one of reality’s layers.
    And then it was gone. The woman
pushed the baby out into the main flow of foot traffic, becoming lost in the
crowd, and I was left feeling puzzled. Surely I couldn’t have seen what I
thought I had: the vague rumour of a face hovering in the air.
    The Spiker and I got roaring drunk
that night, so I gave no further thought to the event. We snagged a couple of
bottles of Thunderbird from a bunch of students on a night out to celebrate
passing their exams, and retreated to a local squat we knew to pass the time.
    At 5am I found myself flat on my
back and wrapped up in a stinking sheet next to some woman whose body I couldn’t
recall having lain beside. Her hair was thick with dirt, and I could barely
make out her face through the layer of soot that seemed to have accumulated
there for some reason. I sincerely doubted that anything physical had occurred;
I had been unable to sustain an erection for over a year.
    Stiff, tired and hung-over, I got up
and walked outside to swallow some fresh air.
    We were up on the first floor of an
old condemned office complex on Pink Lane, were the whores and junkies gather,
and I stood on the fire escape and spied on the sleeping city below. Early
risers – Worm-catchers, as we called them – tramped the slumbering streets
leading from the train station, heading for early shifts, returning from
all-night parties, or just trying to walk the night out of their system.
    Through the hazy morning air I
thought that I could see misty shadows hanging from them, like the remnants of
bad dreams. It was an odd sight, lonely and rather frightening, but I put it
down to the cheap booze and began to climb down the folding metal ladder to the
street below.
    Finding some loose change in my
pocket, I went into a McDonald’s for a coffee. It was the only place willing to
open that early, and I regretted spending the cash, but I had nowhere else to
go, nobody to see. Time alone was what I needed, if only to clear my throbbing
head.
    After the coffee, I walked the
streets, waiting for the people to arrive. Saturday morning shoppers were never
generous, but sometimes patience might be rewarded with a few quid thrown at you
by some witless wag who thought it was the epitome of humour to piss on you
from a great height when you were down on your knees. I didn’t mind: money is
money, no matter the manner in which it is given.
    I walked, sat in shop doorways and
avoided company. A few other faces I knew were patrolling their habitual spots,
but all they got from me was a nod of the head, a wink of the eye. I was in no
mood for chat.
    Some time around 10 am, I saw my ex
wife. She was alone, climbing out of a taxi on High Bridge Street. There were a
few fancy boutiques in that area, and I guessed that she was shopping for some
new clothes