Short Stories | No Ones Problem

Ash had never felt wanted, and for good reason. He had been told as much by his cold, indifferent mother the moment he reached fourteen.

Her cruelty which had grown year by year only served to confirm what he already knew in his heart. He was unplanned, unloved and decidedly unwelcome, Growing up with a series of dysfunctional, dangerous or abusive father-figures and making few friends over the years, he never had a chance of a normal life.

Not really.

He learned when he was very young that his real dad, an unemployed alcoholic with seemingly few people skills, had burned to death in a car wreck just before he was born.

He was under no illusion that he was alone in the world until one day, lingering in the loft for a few moments of peace, away from the chaos below him, he finds a birth certificate, his birth certificate inside a plain, tattered brown cardboard box.

Within minutes. That box. That dusty, plain brown box, changes everything.