First Pages: Finders-Keepers by C.M. Simpson

Finders Keepers is the second short story to be found in An Anthology of Worlds. It is also available as a stand-alone short story.

A single gold coin shines on the pavement, but no one except me seems to have noticed it. I watch it, hoping someone will take it and claim it as their own. Needing someone to take it. Please take it.

Finders Keepers is available as part of AnAnthology of Worlds, and also as a stand-alone title at Smashwords, Kobo, Kindle, iTunes, and Nook.

First Page: Finders-Keepers

The two-dollar coin lay on the pavement, shining. Its golden surface gleamed beneath the sun, casting a knife-edged wedge of shadow where it touched the concrete.

I sat on a bench at the bus stop and watched the coin shine. I watched the different shoes walking past it and hoped someone would take it. No one had, yet.

A mother wheeling a pram paused, the front of the pram casting enough shadow to block the sun from the coin. I wondered if anyone else saw how the coin shone despite the shade. The mother hadn't.

A pepper-haired, wiry-coated terrier noticed the coin. It paused, in lifting its leg on a nearby wall, and growled, its wiry coat standing more on end than usual. Growl over, object intimidated, the terrier finished placing its mark and trotted away. Its wiry hair remained spikier than usual, but it didn't look back.

I sighed. Even the terrier would have done.

The mother with the pram didn't notice the still-shining coin. She was too busy reading the timetable pasted beneath the glass of the bus shelter. Satisfied with the whens and the whiches of buses, she walked away. Her baby gurgled at me as she passed, but I ignored it, knowing it would do me no good to tuck the offending currency into its pram. I continued to stare despondently at the coin.

Behind me, from the post office, I heard the clock strike, and counted the chimes. One, two, three. Good, three o'clock. That meant there’d soon be children on the street. Bigger children, I mean, than the one in the pram. Children who were likely to pounce on the sparkling bounty on the pavement. I needed only wait a little longer, and my trials would be over.

A bus arrived, pulling up beside the shelter with a hiss of brakes and a sigh. The bus driver looked at me to see if I was interested in his bus. I wasn't, so I looked deliberately away. He... 

END EXTRACT

If you want to read more, Finders Keepers is available as part of AnAnthology of Worlds, and also as a stand-alone title at Smashwords, Kobo, Kindle, iTunes, and Nook.