Finder’s Keepers
Everyday a new item gets placed in the lost and found. They loose it and I find it. Whatever comes in I usually pocket and replace it with my own junk. I’ve got cameras, wallets clothing, you name it I’ve found it. I find the odd set of keys but never the car to go with them. All the things I find are usually pretty useless, but one day I found something worth my while. I found a backpack full of cocaine and a gun. It was obvious that this bag belonged to a drug dealer. I later discovered that the front pocket contained ten thousand dollars.
I made the wise choice of quitting my job and becoming a drug dealer because I had millions in cocaine and a nice ten thousand dollars to tide me over for the time being. I was only twenty-seven so I made up an excuse that I won a small lottery in Canada and was retiring. It wasn’t the best excuse but it seemed better than I found a shit load of coke and a gun so I’m going to deal.
Half a year in and my sales were going great. I had made $500,000 and still had half the bag of coke left. It was only worth a million total so my calculation of millions was a little off. One day, I received a phone call from a guy who said he got my number from a friend and knew that I was dealing coke. I thought nothing of it so I agreed and told him to stop by my house tonight.
That night he arrived at my house to pick it up and I invited him in. I told him to make himself at home while I went into my room to grab the coke. I pulled the bag out to scale him out a quarter when I discovered a small wallet hidden in a secret compartment of the bag. I wondered how I could have missed this before. I took out the wallet and opened it to see that it had another $500 cash. It was my lucky day. I then took out the driver’s license and took a long hard look at it. My heart began to race as I realized the person’s ID I was holding belonged to the man making himself at home in my living room. This was his bag, his coke, and his gun. He must have talked to the people at the TTC lost and found. They must have told him I quit because I won the lottery. I bet he knew then and there I had the bag. I should have thought of a better excuse. I then tucked the revolver into my pants and proceeded to the living room like nothing was wrong.
When I got to the living room he was standing in the middle of the room holding a shotgun. He told me to give him the rest of the cocaine and all the money I had made off of it. I handed it over with no fuss. As he started walking toward the door to leave, I pulled out the revolver and shot him in the back of he head. He must have forgotten about the revolver he lost too. Finder’s keepers.
-Curtis Reed
Edited by: Sharon Lazarow
“Oh my God! Watch –“
That was the last thing I had heard before I got hit. A young man in the prime of my life, got hit by a truck. My whole life ahead of me; halfway through University. Girlfriend, job, family. Life was great.
One stupid mistake took it all away.
So here I am, dead. The afterlife isn’t what I’d hoped it would be. I’m just a lost soul, floating around in space. Is this forever? Is it temporary? Does time even exist? How long have I been here? A minute? A year? A lifetime?
I’m lost. There must be other souls around here somewhere. I try to yell, “Hello, is anybody there?” but forget that I have no voice.
No body.
Nobody.
Nothing.
I am floating around in nothingness…
Blank.
Blank.
Blank.
Wait, I see a light. It’s just like I’ve been hearing about my whole life.
The light.
I drift towards it.
“Ryan! Ryan! Oh my God, you’re awake!”
Crap.
I was this close from going to heaven.
-Alon Givaty
Richard Wilson is a millionaire
The British Columbia marijuana growing industry generates about $6 billion per year in hard currency profits. This allows people like Richard Wilson, a 29 year old University of British Columbia drop out, and those above him to amass personal fortunes and political power. Everyone gets a piece of the marijuana cultivation money-pie. Hardware stores, car dealerships, electricians, real estate agents, police officers, money launderers, attorneys, bankers, and retail stores. You name it. Some police officers grow, sell, and smoke pot. Prosecutors and judges do too. Technicians who work for BC Hydro, the main electricity supplier, often help growers get enough electricity in ways that won't be detected by BC Hydro's partnership with anti-marijuana police, who seek to identify grow ops based on unusually high energy consumption. And at the top of the food chain, people take a million a year in profit, without running the risk of getting busted or doing the hard work of keeping crops alive. The industry doesn't run on trust, good intentions or so-called "marijuana consciousness." It runs on one mutual interest: to make as much money as possible, as soon as possible, with as little risk as possible. In the high-stakes world of commercial growing, smart people like Richard Wilson are professionally paranoid. The people who purchased the house and pay property taxes on it are not Mr. Wilson or his associates, they are a faint investment group with fictitious identities, complex real estate paperwork, dummy investors, puppet people, and foreign bank accounts. If the grow house is ever busted, it won't matter how hard investigators work to find its real owners. The real owners of the house and the people who helped them obtain ownership of it, will never be identified, and, even if identified, will probably never be caught, punished, or have their assets seized. Canadian police know this, and they don't try so hard to bust big grows, which is one reason that growing in Canada is still much safer than growing in the US. When you drive around Vancouver, you can bet that every fourth or fifth house has a grow op inside. Just ask Richie Wilson.
-Robert Crenson
Edited By: Sharon Lazarow
