The Green Buddha

A Very Short Story

There is a green little Buddha statue on my desk. I stole it from a New Age shop in Birmingham, at eighteen, during our last school trip before graduation (don’t ask me why our school took us to Birmingham on a trip: our English teacher had ideas).

I don’t know what took me to steal it: that was not something I would normally do, unlike some of my friends. The little Buddha statue is the only thing I ever stole, as far as I can remember. I grew fond of it. It has been with me in every city and every house I went, and followed me through each of my divorces.

The shop survived all these years, until early this week at least. I know it because it was on the news that the shop owner had been shot dead. A robbery: two nervous people in a mask, a gun, a loot which can’t possible be big. How much does a New Age shop in Birmingham make?

That morning there was a dark brown stain on the Buddha statue, like chocolate, or old blood. The synchronicity was not lost to me: a stain like blood appears on a stolen statue when the rightful owner got killed. Not that I could see why anyone should haunt a cheap tacky trinket. I had to rush to work and didn’t have time to wipe the statue clean.

When I came back, the stain was gone. I thought I must have imagined it (I have been tired lately, overworked, under-slept). I would have already forgotten the whole thing, probably, if not for the photo I saw today in the news.

They have caught the robber. He is eighteen, and he looks like I did - exactly like I did - twenty years ago, down to the haircut, to the little more on the top of my left cheek. He has my name too, with only one letter changed.

And a dark brown stain has appeared on my chest, and I’m not sure what to make of it.