Love in the Kali Yuga

Though he did not know, Gary was Buddha. His infinite compassion, cultivated over lifetimes of chanting and meditation and altruistic acts, required that he remain veiled, even to himself.

The salesman who sold him the assault rifle at the show, had he known (his infinite soul laid bare beneath the soft, loving gaze of the Awakened One), would have fallen to his knees in adoration. As it was, Gary discovered that he had been shorted five dollars and thirty-eight cents in change only when he reached the parking lot, far too late to go back into the convention center and demand his money back.

This fact, the unfairness of it, the sheer, stupid pettiness of it, was one of the last things Gary furiously considered as he walked into the post office where he worked. He pumped twenty-five bullets into his co-worker George, thereby saving George from the karma of acting on the sweating, wrenching, watery-bowelled fantasies he’d been indulging lately of sexually assaulting his 12 year-old step-daughter. Gary did this, all unaware, before putting the gun in his mouth and scattering the contents of his skull all over the first-class mail sacks, his final act of compassion this lifetime.