Gifted Hands. (Book 2.)

Hello and Welcome you absolute legend, I hope you are doing good. Thank you for choosing my story to read. I would like to give massive love, upmost gratitude and respect to this book publishing platform and your beautiful self.

Gifted hands is the next story to An Essence Of Time so please read that book first, if you have already a massive thank you and my love to you, I really hope you enjoy reading this story.

Now it’s time for you to see the curtains open up on my cinema screen, I hope you have your chosen and received your preferred popcorn and drink, and comfortably enjoy in your recliner chair. Once again, my love and respect to you, thank you for reading and enjoy the visual display.

Are you comfortable my friend? Good, then it’s time to begin.

A run-down corridor with flaky walls, hearing the buzzing from flies that are hovering around the black bags of rubbish, I could explain the smell concealed in this building, but I don’t want to insult your nostrils just know it stinks. Max is stumbling towards the flat he lives in at the bottom, stumbling past a shabby wooden door that conceal other people's living quarters. Burning this place down would be a step towards an improvement.

Max stops halfway, half-cut, leaning against the wall, taking a swig of whiskey from the J D bottle in his right hand; like the plaster on the walls, he’s half-plastered, he goes back to stumbling, hearing a muffled argument concealed behind one of the doors. Max stops after a couple of steps just to take another swig of whiskey; after he takes a deep breath while looking forward with blurry vision trying to focus on his flats door but too drunk, he decides to continue to his flat.

The argument soon to be boiling over to the corridor, the flat door it was concealed behind swings open to Max’s right side, with a half-dressed skinny man thrown out, crashing into the wall on impact, knocking more of the walls plaster off, crumbling to the floorboards like this skinny guy trying to get up, as a larger man wearing a grubby vest comes storming out from the flat, his scarred tattooed fist connects with other guys jaw.

Spit flings out from the larger man’s mouth, “Fucking scummy cunt! Sleeping with my woman!”

Max is just leaning there, taking another swig of his drink, while watching the fight unfold, as the larger guy with faded tattoos all over his arms too knuckles, as the cheating woman in question emerges from the flat, with blood trickling from her nostrils and her eyes are puffy, another punch connects onto the side of the skinnier guys eye sockets, he doesn’t crumble to the floor again like the wall, instead comes up with a punch of his own, an uppercut to be precise, his fist connecting beautifully on the larger man’s chins, knocking him clean out, his lump of a body thudding the ground, nearly knocking down this godforsaken excuse of an apartment complex, which would be an improvement, as I said before this is a real shit hole of a place, not even vermin want to live here, the type of place you have to wipe your feet before you leave, don’t want to make the world dirty.

The skinny guy gets on one knee, wiping the blood away from his nostrils, he has a split lip. Max takes another drink of whiskey, gulping while he steps over the knocked out guy on the floor to carry on walking to his flat door at the end of the corridor.

Max is opening the door to his studio flat, and the woman over Max’s shoulder is helping the skinnier guy up, walking back into her flat for her to tend to his every need. Max slams the door behind him in drunken rage, he got sacked from the only thing that mattered to him, which was his science job, working in a laboratory with one of the world's most renowned scientist.

Inside the dark and dingy apartment, the blinds are broken and they don’t go up to let in the only light source being from a window and there’s no light bulb because it was never replaced. Max’s sofa bed is still laying out with tattered bed covers laying scruffily on top, he hasn’t got a lady to call his own or much money, especially now since he has lost his job and the overpriced rent is due soon.

Max drunkly sits on his sofa bed looking around his flat, which is falling apart, dirty plates have pilled up in the sink, some mouldy and some are still fairly fresh takeaway containers, from the Chinese and Indian restaurants down the road, are scattered all around his apartment, a pile of his dirty clothes is beside the barely working washing machine, it’s door is hanging on by a screw in the hinge.

Max sighs, gulping down a swig of whiskey, and pulls out boxes of headache tablets and paracetamol from his tattered coat pocket, tearing open the box, he pushes all the pills out and into his hand shoving all of the pills into his mouth, chewing and swallowing with the rest of his whiskey. Max lays back on his brown sofa bed, which was initially grey, waiting for the pills and whiskey to take effect, staring up at the paint-chipped ceiling with tearful eyes, his head swirling like a ceiling fan; lucky for him there isn’t one in this place, because it wouldn’t work anyway, and most probably would fall on him while he sleeps.

He gets up out of his bed sometime later. A light scattering tapping noise came from his flat's window, from the droplets of rain falling outside. He is stumbling forwards toward the raggedy blinds to open the window for some fresh air, but darkness engulfs him as he collapses to the filthy carpet dragging his hand across the dust-filled blinds, dust flickering up and going airborne, lucky he didn’t smash his head off the rusty radiator.