Free The Last Card by Kolton Lee

happily have torn out a clump of the hair Beverley was so proud of. Instead he offered to box her face. Beverley stood up and said if he was a man let him try. After the silence that followed she told him that he was an ignorant ox, he didn’t know what he had with her and Cyrus, and he was killing her love for him.
    Beverley claimed to know him better than he knew himself. She said that she could see he was trying somehow to redeem himself through boxing, but if he didn’t hurry up and do it he was going to throw his life away trying! But she, Beverley Angela Hyacinth Fredricks was not going to let him throw her life away. And Hell would freeze over before she let him deprive their son of the rights and opportunities he deserved. It was tough enough out there already. Cyrus should not have to grow up with a punch-drunk gambling addict for a father who was never there and never had nothing to offer no how!
    H stepped back, reeling, when he heard all of this. His heart raced as he sat himself down at the cheap kitchen table. Was she asking him to choose between his family and his boxing? She told him to read her lips. That was precisely what she was asking.
    And so H was now in the run-down gymnasium in South London where he had trained for over ten years, pounding Hell out of a heavy leather bag that looked older than he did, thinking about life. Around him, the gym with its peeling paintwork, its dust and its grime, was abuzz with activity. Ten other boxers trained hard at various stations; on speed bags, shadow boxing, skipping, floor work. At one end of the gym there was an elevated boxing ring. Two boxers sparred with each other while Nick, the man from Belfast who set up the gymsome twenty-four years earlier and who was now its gnarled trainer, watched from one corner. Six other boxers stood around the ropes.
    The staccato, syncopated orchestration of the gym’s movement was held in place by the booming music system that pumped out the music and words of the American rapper, the late Notorious B.I.G.
    … SMELL THE INDONESIA, BEATS YOU TO A SEIZURE,
THEN FUCK YOUR MOMS, HIT THE SKINS TO AMNESIA …
    The pounding, slapping, scuffling of leather throughout the gym mysteriously kept time to the music that dripped with the depraved violence of the deceased New York gangsta rapper.
    … SUCKING ON THE TITS,
HAD THE HOOKER BEGGING FOR THE DICK,
AND YOUR MOMS AIN’T UGLY LOVE, MY DICK GOT ROCK QUICK …
    H didn’t particularly like rap music, but the brutality of the lyrics and the beat somehow complimented his colleagues’ and his own pursuit of violence.
    Matt, walked past H with a bundle of skipping ropes. Matt was Nick’s only son and at twenty-three was now training and managing fighters in his own right. He joined his father, standing outside the corner of the ring watching the two talented boxers, one in his early twenties, the other in his late teens. Both boxers were black – Sam and Blood – and both sparred stylishly with each other in their head guards. Blood, nineteen years old, was clearly the more talented; if he kept his rate of progress up, he would be destined for good things.
    Nick watched the action with intense concentration, screaming his commands, He was old and grizzled now, wearing grey stubble and a sweat-stained T-shirt.
    ‘No punches to de head … I said no fuckin’ punches to de head! … Dat’s good, dat’s good … keep movin’, keep movin’ … slip dat jab, Sam, slip de fuckin’ jab! … for Chroist’s sake willya move your fuckin’ feet!..’
    Nick looked over at the big clock on the wall with the red minute hand.
    ‘Roight, toime! Good work, Blood, you’re lookin’ good, son.’
    Sam and Blood touched gloves. Sam climbed through the ropes and out of the ring, joining the others outside. Blood, meanwhile, prowled inside, staying loose. Nick looked around the gym.
    ‘So who’s next?’ Although he shouted this into the body of the gym his voice was drowned out by the gems