Neil Gray was leading a pleasant life. He was thirty-two, happily married, and had a decent job as a systems analyst. He and his wife were doing well financially and each had an outside interest or two, which helped put spaces in their togetherness, to keep things happy. On his own Neil had studied some spiritual paths over the years to try and find some meaning in life itself, and learned what he could about karma, reincarnation, and the role love plays in all of it.

He and his wife, Tina, met at college, hit it off right away and started dating. A couple years out of college they married and bought a house. They both had jobs they enjoyed. They had tried and failed to have children.

Lurking behind this happy scene was Thomas Morton. He had dated Tina during college, and had always felt wronged—by Neil!—that she chose Neil over him. After all, he was the better man! He was bigger, more manly, had a sterling personality; why wouldn’t she marry him instead of that wimp? Neil must have done something, or said something about him to make Tina turn him down. A few years after college Thomas had a short marriage (to a woman who looked remarkably like Tina), which lasted three years until she tired of him and his toxic personality. So he had been alone these past four years, stewing. Once divorced he turned his attention back to Tina. It just wasn’t fair that she was married to that guy! This got under his skin and escalated until he really became obsessed. He decided to put together a plan to discredit Neil and prove to Tina she had made a mistake with him.

He got in touch with some people, made a few preparations, then contacted Neil and invited him for a drink. Neil, who was very surprised to hear from Thomas, told him he didn’t drink alcohol. Thomas said, “so just have a ginger ale. There’s something I want to talk to you about. Don’t tell Tina.”

Although Neil didn’t particularly like Thomas, or bars, he was nice enough to agree to meet him after work one Thursday at Eddie’s Bar. When he got there, Thomas was already there, in a booth, and had already ordered a ginger ale for Neil. He had also slipped a roofie into the drink, and in about a half hour Neil was totally out of it.

Thomas put in a phone call to Tina.

“Tina, Neil’s with me this evening, and he may be very late getting home, so don’t worry, okay?”

“Ooo-kay,” she said. “Can I talk with him a minute?”

“Oh, sorry, he’s in the restroom. I’ll ask him to call you.”

Tina thought it was pretty odd that Neil would meet up with Thomas, but put her unease aside.

Then Thomas put Neil’s arm over his shoulder, half-carried him out of the bar like a drunk, and shoved him into his car. He drove to his house, where a couple of women he had paid stripped Neil bare, got him into lingerie, a short red dress and heels. They did his hair, made him up kind of like a hooker and painted his nails.

Then a series of pictures were taken of Neil in very compromising positions with Thomas (body parts only) and a couple buddies of his. They looked realistic and very damning.

When this part of the plan was finished, late that night, Thomas carried him to the car, took him home, dumped him on his front doorstep, then disappeared. Neil lay there all night. One of Thomas’s friends anonymously called Tina at 6:30 a.m. to tell her someone was sleeping on her front stoop. She looked over and was surprised to see Neil wasn’t in bed. She put on a robe and opened the door to find Neil lying there. She was shocked at how he was dressed, and she noticed his lipstick was all smeared, making her wonder just what he had been up to. She knew he was a good man, but what was this? Had he been hiding another side of his life?

Neil was just coming around and had no idea what the hell was going on. He was gobsmacked to find himself dressed up like that, with Tina standing over him looking pretty disappointed.

“What in the world is happening? The last thing I remember I was going to meet Thomas at a bar.”

“What did you meet him for? So you could make out with him?” she said in a very unfriendly tone.

“Making out?? He just asked me out of the blue to meet him there, even though I told him I don’t drink.”

“I see,” she said, not really seeing.

“I have never lied to you,” he said.

When she just stood there with her arms crossed, he finally said, “I’m going to clean up,” unsteadily getting to his feet and lurching into the house. He used Tina’s cold cream to get rid of the makeup, and her nail polish remover, and then took a hot shower.

Tina took the time to phone Thomas to ask him what had happened.

“He said he was meeting you at a bar. Then he shows up on my doorstep dressed like a hooker? Do you know what this is about?”

“We didn’t meet at a bar, Tina; we met at a diner. I knew about Neil and his sexual preferences, and I was worried it was going to ruin your marriage. I asked him to meet me so I could try and talk him out of it,” Thomas said, sounding embarrassed.

Tina had to sit down, she was so stunned.

Thomas had arranged for someone else to anonymously send Tina the photos taken the night before. When she saw them she hit the roof and yelled at Neil to get out. She allowed him to pack a suitcase of clothes, but that was it.

-o0o-

Neil suddenly found himself without a home or wife. He really didn’t know what to do. He drove around aimlessly, in a thick mental fog, and then found a motel, where he checked in. He wasn’t even sure where he was. He didn’t even know what had happened to him while he was unconscious, yet he was getting all these repercussions.

Over the next few weeks Thomas went into action, playing the concerned friend to Tina. He explained to her that Neil had been with many men, even during college. This was a complete fabrication, and as close as Tina and Neil were back then, she should have known it was a lie. When she got steamed up about that he helped her find a divorce lawyer who essentially made Neil a pauper. Thomas also helpfully informed Neil’s workplace what he had been doing, and he was fired. Any friends Neil had abandoned him after hearing the gossip. He only got a glimmer of what had been done to him from their comments.

He ended up at a homeless shelter, sitting on a bed, numb, and thinking over the shambles his life had suddenly become. Being of a spiritual bent, he knew that something this drastic had to be big karmic payback for actions he had taken in this life or a past life. Although he was very unhappy about what had happened, he also knew that to get angry about it and look for revenge would only perpetuate the cycle. He reckoned he had wronged Thomas or Tina, or both of them at some point and was due this dark night of the soul. Before he went to sleep that night he inwardly asked whatever higher power there might be to give him a dream to explain this.

The dream he had was of a past life in the early nineteenth century—he was unable to tell in what country. Scenes flashed by. He saw a large man, richly dressed, strutting through a mansion. As he looked at the man, he suddenly saw the scene through the man’s eyes, and realized it was him in this former lifetime. He knew he was a selfish jerk, not much concerned with others or their needs. He knew he was the owner of a large estate and thousands of acres of land.

A servant he recognized as being Thomas in this lifetime was one of his young footmen and Tina was a housemaid. As the master of the house he found Tina attractive, and although he was married, he forced himself on her, thinking nothing of it; it was just one of the privileges of being the master. There wasn’t much she could do about it without losing her position. Thomas was fond of her, and tried to protect her, so he fired Thomas and made sure he would never get work as a house servant, at least in that area. Tina became pregnant with his child, so he let her go.

When Neil awoke the next day he remembered the dream, which had seemed very realistic, and was mortified that he had acted so cruelly. This situation he found himself in was indeed payback. He made a conscious decision to forgive Thomas and Tina, accept the payback, and move on.

-o0o-

Over the next few months Neil found temp work with the local Minutemen agency as a laborer while he stayed at the shelter. He saved every penny he could, and was eventually able to move to a new city to really start over. He found a menial job there and a slum to live in and began to rebuild his life.

As time went on he tried finding work in his field, but was turned down every time. He figured this was somehow connected to that load of karma, since he was well-qualified. So he ultimately found himself a job on a construction site, as a laborer. This paid much better than the jobs he’d been getting, and he was able to build up a small savings and move to an apartment that was a step up from the slum.

As the years passed he graduated to better jobs in construction and became happy enough with his life. He got himself pets so he could have a way to give and receive love, and avoided romance and women. He led a very quiet life. In this way thirty-five years passed.

When he retired he began volunteering at the local hospice, helping people who were close to death be as comfortable as they could be.

-o0o-

A new patient arrived one day, and to Neil’s shock he recognized it was Tina. She was a mere shadow of her former self, in addition to being terminally ill. Momentarily the old feelings of betrayal rose up, but he was able to take a breath and let it go. He asked the volunteer coordinator that he not be assigned to her. He didn’t want his presence to upset her.

Tina did see him passing by from time to time, but it was two weeks before she realized it was Neil. It brought back their whole history, and how she had been manipulated into wronging him.

-o0o-

After she had kicked Neil out it hadn’t taken long for Thomas to reveal his true nature to her.

“You deserved better than to be with a gay schmuck like him,” he told her. That rubbed her the wrong way, even though she had made the decision to kick Neil out.

And it also didn’t take very long before she realized how unbalanced Thomas was. He tried to move right in on her, and even proposed to her while the dust was still settling, which she found a bit odd and incredibly insensitive. She began to wonder if somehow Thomas was connected with what had happened to Neil.

He kept coming over to her house, and when she wasn’t that receptive toward him, he started to get abusive. Eventually she had to take out a restraining order against him. He violated the order more than once, and ended up in jail. In the shared cell he boasted to his cellmate how he had set Neil up and ruined him.

“My girlfriend’s husband was a wimp and a real weasel, ever since college, but I couldn’t get her to see it. So listen to this: I drugged him, got him made up like a hooker and had some really spicy pictures taken of him! Once she saw those, it was all over between them!”

Thomas kept going on about what a triumph this was, and how clever he was, neglecting to mention that he was in jail because the “girlfriend” found him violent and kind of crazy.

This cellmate was in jail for a minor infraction, and he just listened. When he got out he let the District Attorney’s office know what he had been told. Thus the information got back to Tina, who now realized the full extent of her betrayal. She was incredibly angry with Thomas for ruining her marriage and for doing this awful thing to such a nice guy. It never crossed her mind that she had had the option of believing her husband.

She had no idea where she could find Neil, and if she could find him, what could she possibly say? ‘I’m sorry’ just didn’t seem like it would be enough.

Tina tried to get on with her life, but it took years for her to try and forgive herself for her actions. She did remarry, about four years later, but the marriage lasted only five years. She was too afraid to really give herself to another man, and this man got tired of waiting.

By the time thirty years had passed she was having health issues. First breast cancer, then she’d be clean for a while, but the cancer kept coming back, until she was told she was terminal, at which point she opted for hospice care.

-o0o-

At hospice she noticed a man passing in the hallways who seemed vaguely familiar, but it took two weeks of tiny glimpses before she realized it must be Neil. She asked an aide to have him come and visit her.

Neil was surprised to get the request to see Tina, but he went to her room.

He stepped inside and they looked at each other.

“Neil,” she said, and burst into tears.

He wasn’t sure what to do to comfort her.

“How can I ever apologize enough for what I did to you?”

“Try not to dwell on those things,” he said. “You already have enough on your plate, and I forgave you years ago.”

“Do you even know all that that bastard Thomas did? He set you up, drugged you, got you dressed up, took pictures…”

“Please, Tina, I’d rather not hear about it. It was all so long ago and I have moved on.”

“How can you be so calm about it?” she asked.

“It didn’t take me long to realize it had to be karma coming back to bite me. I had obviously wronged both you and Thomas in another lifetime, and I was getting my just desserts.”

He didn’t think there was any reason to go into detail about the dream he had had.

Tina now remembered how into spiritual things Neil had been. Still, it was hard for her to understand how he could not be angry.

“Did you end up having a good life?” she asked.

“I was content with my lot,” was all he would say.

“Did you remarry?”

“No.”

She felt like that was her fault too, and he could sense that.

“Please try not to beat yourself up about this, Tina. It’s all over and done with, and you need to be content and relaxed now. Things worked out as they undoubtedly were meant to.”

This didn’t really make her feel a whole lot better, but she was glad Neil wasn’t angry with her and had forgiven her.

He stood up to leave, as his shift was over.

“Come and see me again?” she asked.

“Sure,” he smiled.

That smile. It had been decades since she had seen it, and she had missed it. It made her smile too. Smiles had been few and far between for her, and this helped release some of the emotional load she’d been carrying for years.

-o0o-

When Neil came in two days later he stopped at Tina’s room, but her bed was empty. She had died the same night he visited. He was glad she was able to let go of enough of her negative emotions to be able to die. He also recognized that meeting her again was the last little piece of that karma for him. And she needed to be able to apologize before she could release her guilt.

Neil sighed, turned and went down the hall to read to his next patient.

The End.
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After I finished this it occurred to me that it’s a rewrite of an earlier story of mine. However, I think it’s sufficiently different that I don’t mind posting it. I just hope it’s finished!