How to Make Monsters Read Online Free PDF Page B

to replace last season’s wardrobe.
    I felt nothing when I saw her. The
hate had gone long ago, replaced now by a sort of bitter acceptance. I meant
her no harm, not any more. Attacking her that one time had cleared my system of
the need to hurt, and now all I wanted was to get on with whatever flyblown
tatters of a life I had left.
    When my book sales had dried up, she’d
left me to move in with my accountant. The two of them had fleeced me for what
little savings I had, leaving me without a bean to my name. She even took the
house in the divorce, which left me homeless. The drinking soon followed, and
before I knew it the world had skidded out from under me and I was living in a
corrugated steel garden shed out near Four Lane Ends.
    We are all just a short step from
the gutter, and if someone chooses to nudge us in the wrong direction, we can
fall in without making as much as a splash.
    I don’t hate my wife. I pity her.
She became addicted to the trappings of being married to a local minor
celebrity – the clothes, the parties, the flash cars – and when it all went
away she’d forgotten why we’d fallen in love in the first place.
    I ducked behind a wall, ensuring
that she wouldn’t see me, and in my haste I managed to turn my ankle on the
kerb. Sitting down heavily on the pavement, I massaged the area, hoping that I
hadn’t broken a bone. People like me have no doctor we can go and see, and we
are treated like garbage if we go to the hospital casualty ward. Having no
social security number, and no valid ID, we are nothing, ghosts. Such is the
price of dropping out.
    Feeling a slight but persistent need
to be underground, I made for the nearest Metro entrance and hobbled down the
stairs. There was a train due in three minutes, so I stood and ignored the
dirty looks and muttered comments until it arrived in a screech of air brakes
through the huge black oval of the tunnel.
    If you jump the barrier at the right
station, and keep your eyes open while you ride the trains, you can spend a
couple of hours down there in the cool darkness before some overzealous prick
of a conductor throws you off the system for not having a ticket.
    As I made my way along the train,
shambling from carriage to carriage, I saw people glance away if I caught their
gaze. They thought I was begging, and the rationale in such situations is that
if you ignore the annoyance it will go away. It’s an attitude that’s always
amused me, but lately it had begun to provoke only fear and a mute form of
rage.
    I saw The Spiker sitting alone in
the carriage nearest the driver. He waved at me as I approached, and I dragged
myself along the greasy handrails to join him.
    “You okay, mate?” he asked, nodding
at my leg.
    “Aye, fell over that’s all. Still a
bit muggy from last night.”
    He let out a baying donkey laugh. “Not
surprised,” he said. “Especially after bedding down with Scary Mary!”
    I sighed, realising that I really
should have recognised the woman I’d woken up next to. Scary Mary: a petite
middle-aged Scottish woman who’d been fleeing an abusive husband for the past
eighteen months. Her fits of temper were legendary, and I’d probably upset her
by doing a vanishing act.
    “What you up to, then?” I asked,
trying to divert my friend’s attention from last night’s transgression.
    “Not much,” he said. “You want one
of these?”
    He produced a couple of rigid iced
buns from the folds of his thin coat, leaving a layer of sugar in the lining.
Back in his old life, when he had a job and a mainstream routine, The Spiker
had used to date a girl who worked at Starbucks. She’d kept up the
acquaintance, sneaking him food whenever she could – usually day-old sandwiches
and stale pastries; stuff meant for the waste bin – and he always shared his
haul with me. That’s how we operated: as a loose team, dividing to conquer the
gnawing pangs of hunger.
    It was right about then, when I was
sitting munching on a