Karma Cleansing

The old monk kneeled in front of the giant golden Buddha. He had spent hours scrubbing it with his little brush. He enjoyed this part most, because he got to kneel at its base. It almost felt like real meditations. He relaxed and let the calm serenity of a task well done engulf him. In the background the handle pump above the well dripped rhythmically at a regular interval. The quiet of the court yard allowed each drip to echo across the yard to him. The sound allowed his mind to drift off to another place long ago and far away. He recalled her face in the cave as she died. The stalactites dripped and echoed in the cave where he hid her body. The ghost appeared as she always did.

"You killed me."

The old monk was not startled and continued to scrub the statue. "I saved you. You would have spent the rest of your life with that monster. He didn't deserve you."

"That is your opinion. You are the judge of such things? It was you who took a life not him."

"He would have beat you and taken you against your will each day of your life. You would have lived a life of misery."

"Yet I would have lived. That would have been something. You took that from me. Why?"

"I loved you. He did not. I could not watch you go off to that fate."

"Are you sure that it was not anger which made you do it?"

"I am beyond anger. I am balanced."

"Now. You were not then. You were full of rage then. You hated your family. You hated your work."

"I did what was best for everyone. It could not happen the way that the elders had decreed. They did not know him. He had them fooled."

"So you were not angry?"

"No."

"So what happened to your brother after you left me in that cave?"

"I killed him. You know that."

"Tell me again. Did you just kill him quickly and run away?"

"No. I waited till he slept then snuck into his home. I covered his head with a bag and beat him. I took him to the outside of our cave and buried him to his neck. I covered his head in honey and let the insects eat him. It took him days to die. I watched the entire time."

"That was not an act of anger?"

"He would have caused another the same pain I saved you from. The elders would have given him another."

"Was he really so terrible? Was he so unworthy to live? Even if he was, did he deserve to die slowly and painfully?"

"He did. He had caused me pain. I could not have you because of him."

"What of the village elders? What was their crime?"

"They gave you to him. They would do it again. They would break up true love again. If they did it once they would do it again."

"So then what became of them, my love?"

"I drugged their tea. While they slept in the meeting hall I bound them. I spread lamp oil over them and the hall. I burned them while they slept."

"You see nothing wrong with this?"

"Yes, I do. There was most assuredly something not right about it."

"Really? What?"

"They all got to die sleeping. They deserved to be awake to meet their fate."

"They all were the problem then?"

"Yes, they all had to go so I could be at peace."

"You are at peace?"

"Yes, I am."

"It occurs to me that a man at peace would not be seeing ghosts."

"Yet it is so. Perhaps I am at peace because of your ghost. I do not want to be left alone with what I have done. I want to keep you with me."

"I could be alive with you now."

"It could not be. I knew that so I destroyed it all. My brother, his servants, the elders, and the rest of the village all had to be cleansed. I had to start over."

"I will never leave you then."

"I know. You are my company and my reminder."

The High Lama walked through the courtyard with his oldest friend Tenzin Thutop. They were enjoying the sunshine. The old monk polishing the Buddha caught his attention.

"Thutop, it has been forty years that he has been silent. He polishes the statue from top to bottom every day. There is no idol to the Buddha which gleams more brightly in the world I would guess. He has never spoken a word that any living man I know has heard. What could he possibly feel he has to atone for?"

Thutop rubbed his bald head thoughtfully, "What indeed, your holiness?"

They walked by and left the quiet little man to whatever moved and haunted him.

THE END

Bio: Ed Sullivan is an enthusiastic newcomer to getting published. He has been writing fiction for twenty five years. He has taken the leap just recently and begun submitting. He raises his daughter, works, writes, and spends time in his own strange thoughts most days.

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