Genesis Read online

  “Then what the fuck was it?”

  They go back to find Eve bathing in the pool beneath the waterfall. The snake’s long gone by this point.

  God’s like “So where’s the kid?”

  Adam’s lost for words. He can’t put it together. “I don’t...she was right over there...”

  “Hey, boys.” Eve’s coming out of the water now, dripping wet.

  God and Adam just stare for a minute.

  She stares back. “You good?”

  God snaps out of it. “No, we’re not good. You mind telling me what the fuck happened to shake this guy up so much?”

  She looks at Adam, frowns. “What? You mean the thing where I...” She extends her index finger. “I thought you liked that.”

  God looks at him like, “Really?”

  Eve looks at God like, “Oh, please – like you didn’t love it.”

  The big guy’s got nothing to come back with, so Adam says, “Not that. When I was coming back earlier, I saw you...”

  “Saw me what?” Eve’s heart racing now.

  “Giving birth to that...thing.”

  “What?”

  “That thing.”

  “What thing?”

  “That long, tentacled, alien-looking motherfucker. Freaked me the fuck out. Is that what our kids are gonna look like?”

  God’s like, “They shouldn’t.”

  “Then what the fuck was it?”

  “I don’t know, Adam. Maybe you were seeing things.”

  She goes over and picks up this bikini she somehow had the time to make out of fig leaves and pulls it on. God and Adam are looking at her like, “What the fuck?”

  “What?” she says.

  God narrows his eyes. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m putting some clothes on. Here, Adam, I made you something too.”

  She tosses him a loincloth.

  He says, “What the fuck is this?”

  “It’s to cover yourself up.”

  Now God’s really getting suspicious. “Since when do you feel the need to cover up?”

  “Since this morning, I guess. Just feels like the right thing to do. I don’t know.”

  Then it all hits him. Everything falls into place.

  “Jesus Christ...”

  “What?”

  “Why do you think I told you not to fuck the animals? That was literally the one thing I told you you couldn’t do.”

  Eve’s silent. Adam’s like, “You fucked an animal?”

  “No...”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “What kind of animal?”

  The big guy’s like, “It was a snake, wasn’t it?”

  Nothing from Eve, but God has his answer. Shakes his head.

  “That jealous bitch. I didn’t mean to turn her into a snake, she just...freaked me out. I don’t know what happened. Now she comes down here, messing with you guys....”

  Adam’s thoroughly confused now if he wasn’t before. “What the fuck are you guys talking about?”

  “Alright, yes,” says Eve, “I fucked the snake. So what?”

  “So what?” God’s eyes are bulging in his head. “That was the only thing I told you not to do.”

  “Yeah, but that’s like telling a kid you can play with all these toys, but not this one. Which one you think she’s gonna wanna play with?”

  “Newsflash: it doesn’t matter what you want. I built you this entire fucking world and I give you one simple rule to follow – one – and you can’t even do that.”

  “But the rule makes no sense. So what if it’s a snake?”

  “It’s a fucking snake.”

  Adam’s like, “I’m gonna have to agree with him there. That’s kinda fucked up.”

  “Yeah, but why is it fucked up? Because you guys say so? Or because it was a female snake?”

  God’s like, “Oh, don’t start with that...”

  “No, I just don’t think you like the idea of me getting pleasure from something that isn’t a dick.”

  A moment of silence.

  “It’s...kind of like a dick.” Adam piping up quietly there.

  Eve ignores him, goes, “Let me tell you something – she did things to me that blew my fucking mind. She was better than both of you guys put together.”

  “Now, hold on a minute...”

  “Why should I have to suppress my innermost desires because there’s something about it you find uncomfortable? You know what, fuck this, I’m fucking out of here.”

  And with that, she turns and storms off.

  God almost can’t believe it. He says, “Fine, go then. Me and A-Rod’ll be better off without you anyway.” He puts his arm around the guy. “I’ll whip us up a few ladies, we’ll booze, it’ll be great.”

  Then Adam steps away, like, “Yeah... I’m gonna go with her.”

  “What?”

  “I love her.”

  “Even after what she did to you.”

  “She was just exploring her sexuality, man. I think that’s healthy.”

  “Oh, Jesus, not you too.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with it. You guys just go on and fuck whatever you want.”

  Adam’s eyes light up. He grins from ear to ear, missing the sarcasm by a mile. He says, “Really? Wow, thanks, man.” And he takes off after Eve at a run.

  Now God’s standing there all alone, and he lets out a sigh. “Goddamn it.”

  Then he hears someone laughing. He turns to see the snake curled around a tree branch, watching the whole thing. Having a great time.

  “Oh, fuck you,” he says. And he storms off.

  Goes back up to heaven and kicks Raph awake and tells him they’re getting wasted. Raph’s like, “I don’t know man, I should probably get home.”

  God’s like, “Dude, I let you crash on my couch all week. You fucking owe me.”

  Raph’s like, “Alright, you twisted my arm. Where’s the coke?”

  And they proceed to get well and truly fucked. Like, proper fucked.

  In the course of the evening, God tells Raph the whole story. Says he’s sick of just aimless partying – he needed a project or a hobby or something. Now, these little play things he made to do what he told them aren’t doing what they’re told.

  Raph says, “You gotta punish ‘em.”

  God’s like, “You think?”

  Raph’s like, “Yeah, man. You gotta lay down the law.”

  God’s thinking, “Man, this guy’s wife is one lucky lady,” but also that he might have a point.

  Raph snorts a line off the glass coffee table. “Also, now that they know they can disobey you, if they eat from the Tree of Life, you’re fucked.”

  God sits bolt upright, panicking. “Shit, I hadn’t even thought about that.”

  When he was landscaping the garden, for some reason God planted a fruit tree that gave people immortality. Guess he thought that as long as people were doing what he wanted, it didn’t matter if they lived forever. But now that they know about free will, it’s time to leash those motherfuckers.

  It’s really making him start to reconsider this whole ‘free will’ thing.

  Raph takes a drag on his cigarette and says, “They’d become like, the same as you. Only the opposite.” Then he thinks. “What’s the opposite of you?”’

  God’s like, “I don’t know. And I don’t wanna find out.”

  So while Raph presses play on ‘The Departed’, planning to drink every time someone drops their r’s, God grabs an axe from the shed and goes back down to earth.

  What he finds there almost causes him to throw up again, and not from the dozen or so beers he had previously.

  Eve on one side, Adam on the other, and the snake in between. All three of them having a great old time and God’s just standing behind a tree like, “What the fuck am I looking at?”

  For a moment, he just stares. Can’t look away.

  Then he marches up and yells, “Hey!”
>
  They all panic when they see God coming up with an axe like something out of The Shining. The humans scramble to put on clothes and the snake slithers off into the bush.

  “What the fuck is this?”

  Not a word.

  “Adam...”

  But Adam won’t meet his eye.

  “I thought we were bros.”

  “We were,” Adam says. “Are. I don’t know, she tricked me...”

  Eve’s like, “I didn’t trick you into anything. You were more than willing.”

  Adam can’t argue with it.

  God lets out a long sigh and tells them he’s had it – they’re out of here.

  When they ask why, he says, “You kill and eat and fuck these adorable animals who were supposed to be your friends, even when I told you not to. What choice do I have?”

  Adam counters with the fact that God didn’t actually tell them they couldn’t kill and eat the animals, and God concedes that he might have been a bit vague on the rules, but just to be clear, from here on out, you can’t kill and eat the fucking animals.

  “And you definitely aren’t allowed to fuck them. Jesus Christ, I just came to chop down the Tree of Life, but after this, I’m fucking done with you. Hit the bricks.”

  Eve’s thinking, “Fuck, I knew we should’ve eaten from the Tree of Life,” but instead she says, “Where are we supposed to go?”

  God says he doesn’t give a shit, just as long as they’re not here.

  So off they go, heading east.

  In a jealous rage, God sets this giant, half-human, half-lion, Sphinx-looking motherfucker with a flaming sword out the front gates to the garden.

  Adam and Eve are vanishing into the distance now. He drunkenly calls after them, “And don’t even think about coming back! You come back, this guy’ll chop you in half like a cantaloupe.”

  But they can’t hear him. He’s shouting to himself.

  He turns back to see the giant looking at him. “What?”

  The giant averts his gaze like a good dog. “Nothin’, boss. Nothin’.”

  “Goddamn right nothin’. Christ, I need a drink.”

  He goes back up to tell Raph, expecting sympathy, but Raph’s like, “You made ‘em in your image, man. What’d you expect?”

  GENESIS 4

  Bro-Down At High Noon

  Adam and Eve head east and set up shop somewhere in the wilderness. He works the field, she works the loom. It’s no Garden of Eden, but it’s not bad. They own their own land, eat their own food, drink their own wine. They’re doing alright.

  Pretty soon, they trade out their fig leaves for animal skins, and they’re looking pretty sweet in their new threads.

  These two are the original trend-setters. Thousands of years after these guys are dead and gone, the leather jacket will still be a thing. You’ll have to be a certain kind of guy or gal to pull it off, but still. There it is.

  They’re making choices here that will affect the rest of human history. Let me give you an example:

  So they’re cold, right? They make a fire. Then Adam, out of nowhere, puts a marshmellow on a stick and starts cooking it. Eve gives him a look like, “What the effing fuck?”

  Adam ignores her, tries it. Not bad. Texture’s a little weird – crunchy on the outside, gooey inside – but otherwise, pretty damn delicious. He cooks one for Eve, but she won’t touch the thing with a ten-foot pole. Takes him a few more nights of constant nagging before she’ll give it a shot.

  And guess what?

  She doesn’t hate it.

  Right there, a tradition is born.

  See what I mean?

  Literally anything they do now is something being done for the first time, and anyone coming after them just follows on from that. Might be the way they drink their wine or eat their food.

  Might be the way they fuck.

  And when they aren’t working or eating or drinking, that’s what they’re doing. They’re fucking. What are they supposed to do? They can’t double-date, there’s no TV. There’s not even any gladiators or executions to go see.

  This is a boring-ass time to live.

  There’s only so much you can talk about before you run out of shit to say. So what do you do instead?

  You fuck.

  You have kids.

  Now you’ve got something to talk about, and a little later, you’ve got someone else to talk to. One ends up a shepherd, the other one’s a farmer, since those are basically the only two professions in existence at this point in time.

  In this world, there’s no hunter-gatherers. No dinosaurs. Everything’s just suddenly – BAM! – it’s there. Straight away, we’re plowing fields and growing crops.

  I suppose you could make the case that back in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were kind of hunter-gatherers. Maybe. Sort of. If hunter-gatherers weren’t allowed to eat meat and lived in a perfectly-cultivated environment protected from any danger by an omnipotent god.

  They’re similar in the way that a slave to a low-ranking person in ancient society would have been to the king’s personal slave. Which is to say, not very – but they’re still called the same thing.

  You can imagine, then, if this shit was happening in the real world, a few guys from a local hunter-gatherer tribe would be watching these folks plow the fields, going, “Fuck that.” They see people breaking their backs trying to grow shit when shit’s already growing. The hunter-gatherers just need to pluck it off the tree, or out of the ground. They need meat, they don’t go on a twenty-mile hike to find grass for their flock – they just find the thing that’s found the grass and kill it there.

  The hunters would be like, “These fucking guys are going backwards, man.”

  Anyway, the first-born – his name’s Cain.

  Straight away, Adam and Eve notice the belly button and they’re like, “What the fuck is that?” Takes them a while to realise the reason they don’t have one is ‘cause they didn’t spend any time getting fed through an umbilical cord.

  Other than that, the kid’s big, tough, rugged, everything you want in a man. Only problem is there aren’t any women around to want him yet, so what he does instead is he works the fields with his dad.

  Second out of the gate is Abel.

  A little gentler than his brother. A little more fragile. He can’t handle working with his hands, so what he does instead is he tends sheep. Just takes them from place to place and while they munch grass, he’s off to the side, masturbating furiously.

  Now, Cain doesn’t like this. Not one bit.

  Not masturbating. He loves masturbating. Especially furiously.

  What he doesn’t like is the slacker he has for a brother.

  He’s busting his hump out in the fields all day and here’s this fucking guy watching sheep eat grass for a living. There aren’t even any wolves around for him to fend off. Basically, he’s a goddamn babysitter.

  So every time they cross paths, Cain mutters some homophobic shit under his breath and Abel, rather than getting physical, rats him out to their mom and Eve gets physical for him. She slaps Cain upside the head and tells him to cut it out.

  But the shit Cain says really gets under his brother’s skin, so he keeps doing it. Keeps getting his head slapped. So he acts all innocent, like he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing.

  “Gay just means happy, doesn’t it?”

  “A faggot’s just a bundle of sticks, right? He’s taking the bundle of sticks out with him to start a fire when he camps with the sheep. I was talking about the sticks, not him.”

  Eve asks her husband if he wouldn’t mind chiming in here and doing some actual parenting for a change, but Adam’s half in the bag already and not much good to anyone. When he does chime in, he says Abel could use some toughening up, but Eve won’t hear a word of it.

  She tells her son to go out and kill the fattest sheep he has, just cut its fucking throat and offer it up to God as a sacrifice. Maybe that’ll help things.

  So Abel goes out.r />
  Cain goes after him, like, “Where the fuck are you going?”

  Abel says he’s going to make a sacrifice and off he goes.

  But Cain’s not about to let his little bro get all the glory, so he goes out to the field and harvests all his best crops, lays them out in a heap. He calls out to God, being like, “Hey, man, come check this shit out.”

  God comes down and he’s like, “Not bad, not bad. But what can I say? I’m a meat-eater.”

  At this point, Cain looks over and sees Abel standing there with his blood-dripping knife and the dead sheep burning on a pyre. Smoke rising up like incense to the big guy.

  God goes over and eats his meal. No knives and forks, just fucking demolishes it with his bare hands. When he’s done licking his fingers, he tousles Abel’s hair like a creepy grandfather.

  I should probably mention that in the time since he saw Adam kill and eat that lion, God had come around on the whole carnivore thing. Discovered ribs, steak, bacon. Hadn’t eaten a vegetable in months and he wasn’t going back.

  He turns to Cain.

  “Sorry, pal. Just not really into the whole fruit and veg thing. Seems kinda gay.”

  In reality, it might’ve had something to do with God preferring the idea of free, nomadic living in tents with sheep and goats and shit, rather than living in one place and working the fields year round.

  Whatever it was, he basically bitch-slaps Cain by choosing Abel’s sheep over his crops. Then he heads back up to heaven.

  Cain looks down at the wasted pile of produce in front of him, then back at Abel, and when God’s not looking, Abel flips him the bird. Big fucking smirk on his face.

  Cain almost can’t believe it. That smug bastard...

  He breaks his back plowing hard all day, and suddenly he’s the gay one? No fucking way.

  Later on, Cain calls God down a second time, says he tried again. He’s got something cooking on the pyre and God likes the smell of it. When he’s done eating, he sits there patting his stomach.

  He says, “Fuck me, Cain, that was the shit.”

  “Yeah, it was alright?”

  “It was better than alright.”

  “Wasn’t overcooked?”