Prologue
Karma’s a bitch.
I know because I’m her. Or rather she’s me depending on how you see it. My name’s Karmen O’Connor and I’m one of many responsible for making sure people get their due karmic payback.
I get cursed a lot. Comes with the territory. I’m in charge of keeping the scales of karma in check, at least for my particular branch. I handle cheaters. You cheat on your spouse, your taxes, your test, then you have to deal with me. Though, you’ll never actually see me.
I lurk in the shadows, watching, waiting for the right time to strike. My punishment is swift. Most people don’t realize the reason they stepped in dog poop, lost their favorite shirt or walked in on their boyfriend with another woman, or man in some cases is because I aligned it that way. That is was their payback for when they cheated on their taxes.
I work District One. It’s a ten-mile block in downtown Portland, Oregon where I grew up. Most days I like my job.
There are loads of karma officers all over the world. Of course, our departments vary like our specialties, but we all do the same thing. Make sure you get what’s coming to you.
Most times payback matched.
Cheat on your spouse guarantees your next lover will cheat on you. You lie to people, it’s a guarantee people will lie to you. Stubbed toe, nasty paper-cut, whatever it was justice would come, but it didn’t always come immediately. A girl has to eat and get her hair done. And since I’m in charge of over five thousand people I get backlogged, sue me.
Sometimes I wished I was an Ahismas. They deal with dharma. Dharma happened when people had good things coming to them. As you can imagine there aren’t a lot of Ahismas officers. The few there are spend most of their time twiddling their thumbs at the office.
And thanks to social media, business is booming. Offenders are everywhere. With the internet, people disregarded the golden rule spewing all the vitriol they wanted from behind a keyboard. It seems anonymity empowers people.
Now, let me be clear, I handle the minor infractions. The big stuff like; abuse, molestation, murder get handled by the Theodites. Thank goodness for that. My job is bad enough without having to handle that sect of evil. Though I’d never met a Theodite personally (they worked out of TBI offices), I’d heard rumors they were terrifying. I supposed if you handled death and destruction day after day you’d probably be frightening, too.
So you tell me, is your karma clear?
