Broken Monsters Read Online Free

up someplace else, but then his momma got herself killed, bled to death in his arms, and he got taken off the streets by the justice system. Ten years straight, and then on and off. Prison’s like booze, it’s a tough habit to break. He used to drown the memories with whatever he could get his hands on, which would get him in trouble all over again. Now he’s learned to block it out in his head, like windows boarded up with plywood.
    TK digs in the kitchen cupboards until he finds a bunch of black plastic trash bags, and then heads upstairs to go through every room with care. They’ve packed in a rush, leaving clothes on hangers, others tossed on the floor. He folds everything up and puts it in the bags. A pile for him, one to send to Florrie, leftovers for Ramón to pick through, and the rest they’ll take down to the church.
    He tries on a checked flannel shirt, but the arms are too short. Same with the suit jacket. That’s the trouble with being a big guy. But the red pair of kicks he finds in a box at the back of the closet fit him just fine. Nothing wrong with them either, practically brand-new, apart from the black oil smear over the right toe. He tucks them under his arm and piles up the old broken toys and baby wipes, a half-full tub of diaper rash cream (everything’s half-full when you’re in asset reclamation), and dumps it in a bag.
    All he needs is to strike it lucky. Find the one house with a suitcase full of money. He could probably buy this place off the bank for what, ten large? Maybe less in this neighborhood. Fix it up, move his sister in, fill it up with his friends, legitimate this time.
    They say possessions tie you down, but maybe not tightly enough, if you look at this town. The sum total of his stuff fits into a shoe box. Photos, a map of Africa, a pair of reading glasses, his AA medals, and an old sixty-minute cassette tape with his family talking on it, made before his little brother died. Cassettes wear out eventually. He knows he should get it digitized. He knows a bit about computers, he’s a self-taught man, but Reverend Alan’s promised to send him on a real course, and that’s the first thing he’s gonna ask them to show him how to do. Photographs, voices—those things are what you pull close when you’re missing connections to people, not fancy sneakers and big-screen TVs.
    The sudden hammering on the door downstairs nearly makes him crap his pants, and he hasn’t even had a chance to use the facilities yet. Maybe the family had a change of heart and called the cops on him. The cops are not kind to stray dogs, even loner ones with more bark than bite.
     He could probably make it out the back. He’s already calculating which bags are worth taking with him when he hears Ramón’s voice over the knocking: “Yo, let a brother in, it’s cold out!”
    He opens the door on his friend, who looks especially squirrelly today, hunched over a battered shopping cart, glancing up and down the street. His face transforms from skittish mistrust to a huge grin when he sees TK, and he waves the free tracker phone Obama gives away to people like them so they can apply for jobs. Good for making plans to raid a house too, although Ramón insists on sending elaborately neutral texts in case it does what it says on the box, and the government is tracking them.
    “Hey, Papi, got your message. Took me a little while to find a cart. Damn Whole Foods chains ’em up.”
    “That’s the problem with gentrification right there, brother. The power’s out, but I found some lunch meat and cheese in the icebox if you want a bite.”
    Ramón peers into the interior of the house, fiddling with the rosary beads he keeps in his pocket. His eyes dart around, finally settling on TK and the red Chuck Taylors under his arm. They’re hard to miss. “Nice shoes,” he says.
    “I think they’re my color. It brings out my eyes.”
    Ramón looks confused.
    “They’re bloodshot,” TK explains.
    “Right.” He