How I Ended Up Here

If you'd asked me a couple of years ago if I envisioned myself raising my baby sister and living with my grandmother, I'd have thought you were crazy. But that was before the accident. I had ideas about what I was going to do with my life while our parents were still alive, but afterward, I ended up as a security contractor.

I’d been shooting, mostly handguns, since I was twelve. Grandpa had been a policeman, and he kept up his skills even after retirement, mostly for pleasure, and partly because it’s always a shame to lose a hard-earned skill. He took me to the range one day, and I loved it. I loved the perfect precision of the old .38 revolver, the concentration it took to send a projectile smaller than my thumb downrange to hit a target the size of my palm. I liked the fact that when I was shooting, that was all I could concentrate on. The sight picture, slowly breathing in, out, and taking up slack in the trigger until the round flew away to hit precisely where I was aiming. I was good at it. I kept practicing regularly after Grandpa died.

After the accident, I found some of my grandfather’s old cop friends, and they recommended me for work and provided me with references. At first, it was small jobs. Take a shift guarding a building under construction. Somebody’s sister is having trouble with her ex. Walk her home. Keep some troublemakers away from a bar. I could have signed up with a larger company, but I preferred working by myself. I think that way I could convince myself that this was just temporary- not a career. I was just moonlighting until I could go to school. And I got enough jobs. I was professional, polite, passed background checks and had a license to carry concealed. After a few years, I gave up waiting for the day when I’d have enough money to go to school full time, and I started taking online classes.

And then I met the Fae. But that's another story.