Free I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2) by Tony Monchinski Page A

“Be
quiet.”
    DeAndre looked in the cupboard. Not much
there he’d want to eat except maybe a box of mac and cheese. Thing
was, he was in no mood for mac and cheese.
    “And don’t be droolin’ on it man,” Fishburne
warned the counter man. “And I betta not get any of that cat. I
want chicken!”
    “’member five-oh pulled up on us that time,
Torell? Jacked us up.”
    “Word,” said DeAndre’s older brother. Their
momma named his brother Terrence when he was born. DeAndre and his
moms calling Terrence Terry for short. DeAndre sometimes
calling him Terr . DeAndre had no idea where Terrence had
come up with Torell from, neither brother knowing anyone by
that name. The thirteen-year-old had to give it up to Terry for
that though.
    Torell sounded hard. It’d been Juan
started calling Terry Toro . Toro because of Torell. Toro
like a bull. Which Terry liked, because bulls were tough.
    “Where was you niggas at?” Luke with his legs
up there in their momma’s chair. “Ain’t no police come into Moses
unless someone dies or somethin’.” Luke another one whose real name
was something else. In his case, Luther . Liked to be called
Luke, like that rap guy did the same thing.
    DeAndre had found what was left of a loaf of
bread—Ronald hadn’t gotten that yet—and the cheese out of the
refrigerator. He melted a little margarine in a pan on the
stove.
    Terry told new people he was meeting his name
was Torell. He also told people he was from Jamaica because
everybody knew Jamaica and Kingston whereas no one ever heard of
St. Vincent and Kingstown. Kings- town , not Kingston. DeAndre
would never call his brother on it, not in front of his friends at
least. Most of the time the fabrication didn’t bother him, DeAndre
comfortable with fiction and down with the beef patties and jerk
chicken. Sometimes though, when Terry started in with his shottas and bombaclots , he lost DeAndre and his
little brother would roll his eyes in his head because Terr was
frontin’, even if his fool friends couldn’t tell.
    Not that Terry or DeAndre had been born in
Kingstown or Kingston. That was where their momma was from. Terry
and DeAndre both born in St. John’s Hospital on Queens
Boulevard.
    “This the bomb right here, yo,” Fred turned
the knob on the stereo, raising the volume, Butsa Nuts rapping
about the days of way back.
    DeAndre pressed the spatula down on his
grilled cheese, looking up at Fred. Fools had the t.v. and the radio on, wastin’ electricity like that. What did Terry and his
friends care? Was momma gonna foot the bill.
    “Turn that shit down, Red.” Caprice and the
others called Fred Red because of the shade of Fred’s hair,
his high yellow complexion. “Tryin’ to watch this movie.”
    “… cuz in the days of wayback / brothers would lay back / cut a line drop a line and press the playback …”
    Fred was blazed off the weed making its way
around the room, staring at the stereo speaker like it was talking
to him.
    DeAndre flipped his grilled cheese, the one
side browning the way he liked it.
    DeAndre recognized his brother and his
friends as older boys playing at being men, at what they thought it
meant to be men. Most of it harmless, but sometimes crossing the
line. Like Juan that time jacking that base head, but it wasn’t
really jacking because the junkie was half passed out and didn’t
put up no fuss. Put up no fuss , as
DeAndre’s momma would indubitably put it. Didn’t put up no
stink—another of his momma’s little things she said—when Juan went
through his pockets, clucker barely responding at all.
    Not that DeAndre’s moms knew about that
incident.
    She did, Juan wouldn’t be sitting here in her
living room.
    That for sure.
    “… crazy Fahrenheit outside but still snowin in my mind / every time that I bip I find myself cutting new lines …”
    “Yo, Red,” Terry telling Fred now. “Turn it
down!”
    Crossing the line was something Luke and his
boys Marquis and Yuri were good at.