“Don't let
others tell you what to do.”
Simon*
#quote
Jessica may be
coming over this weekend so that may lead to a barrel full of fun,
which is more than a carton but not quite as much as a crate. Well,
actually knowing us it could be quite the big barrel. Seizures were
down today, and that was very pleasant, I'm hoping this persists
through the weekend. Anyway onto the flash fiction!
Nikki Nickel
I don't know
how long I've been laying on this sidewalk. At least a few years I
think. The cars keep their same patterns of how they move on the
street but I've seen models change as time goes by. The tree by the
corner dropped its leaves many times and there's been cold snow and
harsh sunlight. A big change came when the burger joint at the edge
of my vision was replaced by a grocery store.
When the rain
comes I always fear being washed away into the gutter because then
I'd never be picked up. To feel the warm hands of a person and
nestled into the cozy home of a wallet or purse. That's the life for
a coin like me. A lost nickel like me can dream though.
Then coarse, dirty
hands rubbed all over me. “It's my lucky day! Just enough!” yelled a
thick bearded homeless man as he picked me up. He mixed me with some
other change and dashed over to a vending machine and dropped us in.
The cold darkness of the vending machine surrounded me and I heard
the thunk, clonk and thud of a soda dropping down.
The room lost
most concepts of time for me, as the only thing I could see was the
small glimmer of movement of the Sun from the slot that we all fell
from. I think three days passed in the machine. I wanted to talk to
the other coins around me, but several shouted strange things, most
of them being very young coins. Being minted recently the world was a
new place and something like darkness and cold was new to them. One
old coin refused to talk. Minted in the forties I wanted to hear the
stories he could tell.
When I left the
machine as change I entered the hand of a man in a collared shirt. He
reeked of fancy wine and must have ditched his suit in whatever fancy
car he rode in. I plopped into his wallet. A much more comfortable
resting place. I felt quite satisfied. In the man's wallet I became
acquainted with several credit cards and the dollars that passed in
and out. One day he stuffed in many hundred dollar bills and several
other coins.
When he pulled
us all out I saw a smiling man holding an antique. The composure on
the smiling man's body made it apparent that he was salesman, but we
stood in an alleyway not a shop. My previous owner shoved me at the
smiling man and took the antique.
“Pleasure
doing business with you Sir,” the smiling man said as he counted
us. “Exact value. And an appraiser such as yourself knows how
legitimate my wares are. Just do make sure nobody else knows you have
it, we wouldn't want the museum calling the police. That'd be bad for
you and my business.”
The smiling man
put me and my friends in his wallet, and soon onto the counter of his
home. He told his wife it was for groceries. His wife took us and
left. During her drive she stopped at a hotel, she took me and a few
of us out, leaving the other half in the purse.
She walked up
to the man there and handed me along with the others coins and the
bills to him. “Hey, its good to see you again. I'll pay the rest
later. I have to do the shopping for my husband.”
When the man
started to escort her to the hotel he accidentally dropped me on the
sidewalk while I watched all the other bills and coins remain in his hand. I stared into the sky again. I wondered how long I would be
here this time?
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