They had lost their souls when they accepted that mission
Fool's Hope
The security guard was shot after trying to shoo away the vandals. Times had changed and this new generation of robbers were not of the kind you could negotiate with, let alone scare off.
As he waited for help, he promised himself he would quit if he survived. The bigger the blood pool got beneath him, he found it harder to fulfill that promise. The looters had taken away what they came for with all the help and logistic support impunity and complicity could provide. They did get scared a little at the prospects of having killed an unarmed guard who had seen them grow and knew them all by their names and nicknames.
It served him right, they thought. He was supposed to stay inside, ignore them, let them do their thing. That stupid self-righteous old prick. He did not even have insurance. What did he care? He did not even have a radio to ask for help. Now he would bleed to death just for nothing.
The guard had seen a lot in his almost thirty years of service. He saw the college bloom and grow. He lived the good days of abundance and respect. Security guards were seen as the guarantors of academic peace and order. They allowed academic activities to go on until late at night. Everybody felt safe and were committed to the protection and beautification of “the highest home,” as they called their college.
He also so the growth of the barrio in the college backyard. He saw the first ranchos made of cardboard and tin; the shabby houses became a street; the street became a neighborhood and once they covered a few acres of college land that was meant for new buildings, dorms and a modern food court, he knew they had come to stay and invade. The expansion of the barrio was proportional to the decline of the university.
Academic and political demagogues allowed those people to stay and grow because the “university should not fence off the people it came from.” That people, with the blessing of a stultifying regime, had just done the unthinkable, the unspeakable. They had killed the hen that laid the golden eggs. They had been furnishing their ranchos with every item imaginable from the classrooms, offices, labs, and any other space intended to eradicate ignorance and promote self-reliance.
To the last minute, the security guard tried to be friends with people he knew did not know better. They had lost their souls when they accepted that mission; now he felt he was losing his. He should have quit before. He knew years ago that it would end like this. No wall standing, a no-man’s land. Hope was surely the mother of fools. He was not bleeding anymore; neither was he aware of his surroundings. Ugliness vanished with pain. The land claims everyone and everything at the end.
Thanks for your reading
This was my entry to @mariannewest and @latino.romano’s 5 Minute Freewrite: Tuesday Prompt: SECURITY GUARD. You can see the details here.
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