Wicked Woman Got Kicked by Karma

Some life situations are just too weird to explain without some supporting evidence for their outcomes. This is one of them.

So today, I’m filing this post under Karma. You decide where it fits for you.

Karma smacked someone in their smug face, and I witnessed every delicious moment as it happened. Friends don’t believe the story. They said the events couldn’t have happened. They’re just too outrageous to be true.

Now I’ll tell you this story, and you decide what you believe.

I once dated someone who believed in Karma. We were teens then, and she spoke as though her life depended on Karma’s enlightenment. She put her trust in Karma every day of her life.

We stopped dating soon after, but kept in touch for over forty years. She’s never lost her Karma belief.

I know as much about Karma as I do religion. As I see it, Karma favours no one. If you do something bad, something bad will come to you. Apply good, and Karma will reward you with the same. No matter how virtuous you believe you are, there’s no escaping Karma’s judgment. It works on externalised actions, not internalised wishes.

Nina was a shy woman who rarely ventured outside. She was white-hot-angry at her former spouse for cheating on her. She wished evil Karma to come and strike him down for all the evil things he’d done to her at the end of their marriage.

I heard the story of his infidelity in detail – the affair with their daughter’s nanny, a fight in the driveway where he nearly killed her by running over her with his car, the police action to separate them, the divorce, and the custody battle for their child.

But then she switched her tone. Vengeance made its way between her words. To my surprise, she admitted to placing herself in the way of the vehicle while it was moving. She admitted to training her daughter to cry to influence the court-appointed psychologists and their decisions about where the little girl should live. Nina cackled about it.

She got sole custody of the child, and with this judgment came all the money she felt she was entitled to get. She told me she was holding all the cards, and he couldn’t do a thing to change it. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I felt sorry for a guy I’d never met… and the daughter mixed up in her fury!

She took the child and most of the money far away and built a new house in the country, facing the mountains!

And then she swished back the curtains on the edge of her living room as though she were a proud Queen presenting her estate. “You like?”

The mountain beyond the glass was impressive. My eyes became transfixed. “Wow! Very few people get to have a mountain as a feature in their living room.”

“I know. It’s so cool, isn’t it? It’s the first and last thing I see each day. Do you know the name of that mountain?” She asked, grinning as though Karma granted her everything she’d wished for.

“Sure, it’s Mount Lindesay,” I replied. “I’ve photographed this mountain many times.”

I heard a loud gasp, and then the curtains snapped shut. Nina was horrified at my response. I asked about her abrupt change; the mountain’s name was the same as her former husband’s! She knew nothing about that giant lump of rock she saw daily.

Karma or not, she woke up to Lindesay every day.

And this is where my friends lose it. They say: 1) Lindesay wasn’t his real name or; 2) it’s unreasonable to accept that a woman would not know the name of a mountain outside her own home.

I get that, but let me add a few extra details.

Her home was built quickly, and she organised almost everything remotely. She left her husband one day and then went shopping for land the next. She found a block she liked, saw the view, bought the land, called an architect and then lived with her parents while the builders put her house together.

While the house in the country was underway, the battle for the money began. She spent her days commuting to the big city to have her child assessed by psychologists. She filed for divorce, freely admitting to lying and cheating her way through the court system to acquire more than she was entitled to. Identifying that mountain in the distance wasn’t such a priority. Greed mattered more.

You should’ve seen how deep those frown lines went after she learned the news of the mountain. We moved away from the window, and she changed the topic to the choice of colours in the home. I have no idea if she ever opened those curtains again.

Was it Karma? God? Or was something else at play?

This is the abridged version. I wove the rest of it into my novel SEETHINGS.

–Michael (Dark Fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)