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Please treat me kindly. I normally write long stories so this is extreme for me. I hope you enjoy it~

I’ve come to realize not all bad people go to prison.

When I was a little girl I asked my father a question. “Why is Daddy never…playing with me?”

At the time I thought I wasn’t being selfish and that it was reasonable to confront my built-in playmate, who was now suddenly gone when I came home from school and no longer making Mickey Mouse pancakes on Saturday morning. I didn’t notice that those smiling blue eyes had become a dull grey from having witnessed for the first time in his life how obscenely violent people could be, just because an innocent visitor wore the wrong color in the wrong place. I didn’t notice his baby face, that was once pink with the hue of youth, paled from seeing a mother slaughtered in front of her child—she wanted to protect her baby boy from a bank robber’s gun.

“Sweetie,” he tried to smile to hide his exhaustion and to show little naïve me that he had not changed, that he was still the same father who played dress-up with me, “Daddy’s a cop. I have to work crazy hours and can’t play with you as often.”

I angrily looked down at the Barbie in my hand, a deep pout on my face as I took my frustration out on brushing her hair and causing a few strands to fall limply to the ground. He sat down next to me and I half-turned away not wanting to talk to the playmate that had openly rejected me.

“I have to put the bad guys in prison.”

I shot him a confused look before turning away again.

“It’s my job to make bad guys stay in time-out for a very, very long time.”

When I grew older I learned prison was a place filled with tiny dirty cells that held petty people and hard-core criminals who, in simple terms, were society’s castaways. My father drilled it into me that going there was the last thing any sane and self-respecting somebody would want to do; as a cop’s daughter I loyally obeyed the law for that reason.

Then why was my father looking at me now with eyes swollen and red from crying, an event to be seen from this man who was hell-bent on proving his emotional strength? Why did he seem so disappointed as he looked at my name? Shouldn’t he be happy that his wallflower of a daughter would be remembered for the good things she did (as insignificant as they may have been)? People would know my name even if they didn’t know me and wasn’t that something everyone wanted?

But I admit this is not what I wanted. Not so soon.

I gaze at the white walls that have boxed me in to protect me from the outside world that so cruelly placed me in here against my will. It was so frustrating not being able to live as I wanted. I was the one who was killed by a drunk driver and tucked away into a coffin.

So why did it feel like I was the one in prison?

I personally had a bit of a hard time following the story, but after rereading parts the story comes together as a whole and is very well done.

One thing I would suggest is varying your sentence lengths. Most of your sentences are very long and it helps create a heavy sad and slow atmosphere, but try to use shorter sentences especially towards the end to pick up the reader's spirits a bit before the ending. Give the reader a sense of freedom. The ability to stretch your wings out and fly. Give us a little hope. Then drag it all down into the final question left unanswered by the author.

Your main question is a create opening question and catches the attention of the reader very well. But I felt that it didn't pertain to the story very much. Starting the story off with the little girl's question I think would make a little more sense.

Because of your beginning question when I read the girl's perspective I thought that her dad had been taken to prison and was no longer around. I love your contrasts and imagery that make the slow progression from happiness to despair seem so much more real.

In the 'sweetie' paragraph you love to use the word to :]

In the question paragraph I would remove the parenthesis part. You're building the climax of the story and building anticipation, tiny divets in the uphill climb don't always work.

Please don't take my critique as meaning your writing was bad in any degree. I just write a lot of critiques (trust me this isn't a lot of writing smile ) This was a very good start for a short story and I can't wait to read more of your work.