That's Life - Short Stories

By Dan Mitchell

A book of melancholy short stories based on life events, hard decisions, and the shit we go through.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9780244992330

Book preview

That's Life - Short Stories

A Fathers Decision

He sat, he thought, he reminisced. If he could live it again, he would change every day, every sunset he missed, every breath. It was days such as today, fathers day, that stopped him in his tracks so he could be reminded of the bad things he had done, the bad things he had spent years trying to correct but had failed so far. He was sure it was never meant to end out this way, the fairy tale lives in stories you heard as a child, they were so easy, uncomplicated. no one ever told you that these stories could never be a reality, The decisions he had made, the paths he had taken, they had led him to this moment, on his own, in someone elses home, where no one knew his name.

He stared at a fathers day card on the mantelpiece, it held him in a trance. The names meant nothing but the card held other life choices, what could have been, he wondered if his children thought of him, remembered his name. He knew he was a disappointment to many, he never wanted to stop trying to change their view. Etched into his mind were the last moments he shared with his family, his wife, his toddler son and daughter. The last time he heard her voice, the words that crossed her lips, It’s not fair on the children to see their father like this. Prison has a way of separating families.

It has been twenty years since he had seen his family, since he had been a father. Twenty years since he had received a card containing the word dad. He knew that the decisions he had made where the reason his children didn’t know their father, but what they didn’t know was that the decisions he had made were for them, to give them a better life, a better future but his decisions had backfired.

He picked the card up to take a closer look, blue crayon scribbles containing the words ‘love’ and ‘dad’ from a child named Tom. The scribbles he longed for, something so simple that means so much. A part of his life he always missed, someone to look up to him, someone's hero. He held the card to his chest for a moment knowing that he will only ever be someone's criminal, or someones past. That moment, he wished he could change everything but he knew he never would.

He slipped the card into the bag of all the other goods he had taken from this house, he took another quick look around for anything else he could sell before he headed out through the back door, the door he had broken.