Of course, her beliefs were her own; who else’s would they be anyway? They’d been lovingly and dutifully crafted over time by experience, obviously. Sure, they could have been influenced by her family and perhaps even her friends, but at most, they added just the slightest bit of nuance. She had done the work and walked each and every step. In the truest sense of it, she had experienced every moment from which the totality of her was drawn.
She had begun to hate the smell of coffee. It seemed to concentrate in the air vents of the heater only to be blown right back in her face. She used to love it. Trips to the coffee shop, late nights in college, early mornings, sunglasses and stories with friends. Conversations with mom while dad slept late on the weekends and the rare dawn with dad as he got ready for the day. Now it was nothing more than an olfactory call to work. A brown, monotonous time clock. Some days it was stronger, some days it was weaker, sometimes it spilled in the car, and other times on the counter, but it was always work.
She tucked her thermos and soft-sided lunchbox under her arm and scrounged around for the small metal badge. It was nearly worn smooth, having passed from guard to guard as they were steadily promoted beyond their brethren. She ran the pin through the breast of her dark blue shirt and breathed deep as her eyes narrowed. This was her family now.
A red light turns green. A buzzer sounds. Heavy metal gates rattle just so before a click, and they pop open. She pushed her way through to an old brown and cream-colored locker room. Above the door, it read ‘citizen guard.’ She would spend the next 12 hours in a tower 30 feet above the old field. It was the park where she had learned to play soccer. And although they no longer played, it still held most of her former team.
The Works of Peter C. Knochel 