The Garden of Eden

It was a huge creature; its thick coils at least two feet thick, piled cylindrically upon itself. Black and white scales the size of my palm decorated it like a chessboard, and yellow-green eyes were slitted in a snaky face.

It was the Snake, as I'd come to know it. I'd had this same dream for weeks.

"So," it hissed, "which will you choose?"

The same question that was asked every time. The same question I'd never answered.

The Snake had a length of its tail laid out like a table in front of me, held a couple feet off the ground. Placed upon it were two apples.

They were big apples, not huge, I guess, but not little ones, either. Sort of the size you'd see at the supermarket and think, "Oh, that's a big apple," but not the kind you'd take a picture of or try to preserve and put in a museum.

One of them was shiny, clean, and dark as ebony. It was so smooth it seemed mirrorlike, and so clearly defined, so focused, that it somehow looked like a knife's edge, despite being round.

The other was far less beautiful. It was white, no, colorless. It was ugly, with a pitted, mottled texture and a fuzzy off-white color that reminded me unpleasantly of mold.

For the twenty-seventh time this month, I asked, "What are they?"

And once again, the Snake said nothing. It only waited.

I turned my back, and left. I knew I'd get lost in the blank white mist that cloaked this dream-world, but that was better than staring at the Snake, with its vile eyes, offering a senseless choice.

~

The dream has continued to haunt me.

The Snake doesn't let me leave, anymore. I wait out the night, having a waiting contest with the Snake. He waits for me to choose. I wait for him to explain.

~

I won the contest, finally--after two years of waiting. But the answer he gave was hardly satisfactory.

"They are half of God," he replied when I asked.

I didn't understand at all at the time. Half of God? I wasn't even religious. Why would I want half of some nonexistent entity?

I would learn, though.

Outside of the snaky, cloudy world that has become my nights, my days were getting worse. I was confused all the time. The Snake's words needled into my ears wherever I went. I started hearing his hissing voice, echoing around corners. Scales slid along walls and under my feet. I lost my job, and ended up getting a new one at a fast food restaurant, where I kept my eyes away from the customers and rarely ever spoke. I had to rehearse my lines each night. "Can I take your order? Do you want a side with that? What size? Thank you for shopping with us," I would parrot. I didn't speak with the other workers during breaktimes or when we left. Dark shadows appeared under my eyes. I thinned out, too much. My ribs appeared under my skin.

It was hell.

"Half of God," I would whisper under my breath. "It's half of God. What else? What apples?" I'd ask anyone who would listen. I'd approach strangers, searching for how to kill the snake. Was it a liar? Can I have both? Can I have neither? I asked everyone. How to answer the question. If I should pick. But no one would give me an answer.

No one ever did. I had to find it.

It was in a book, abandoned, tossed into a Lost and Found at a mall. It must've once been good quality, but the cover was worn and stained, and the pages were warped with spilled coffee. Even the title had disappeared.

I had lost my watch somewhere, so I'd come to the Lost and Found. As I sorted through it, snakes slithered through my thoughts, but suddenly, as I pushed aside this book, they vanished. Yet as soon as my hands lost contact, they shivered back into my head. Whispers hissed through my ears again.

I looked around to see if anyone was looking, then took the book, my watch completely forgotten.

I lived with that book. I slept laying atop it. I kept a hand on it while I worked. I enjoyed the first freedom I'd had in years.

But slowly, like a drug taken too often, it began to wear off.

I held it closer, I carried it everywhere. But tiny hisses echoed in my ears, a woman's hair turned into snakes before my eyes. Within a week, it was worse than ever.

It was days later that I tried it. I opened the book, easing the brittle, coffee-dried pages apart, scanning the first page.

Let there be light, said God, and there was light.

As I took in the pages, racing through the story of the book, I realized something. Something that should have been obvious.

This was the Bible.

The Snake was the Serpent.

One of the apples was the fruit of knowledge.

And the other... the other, would let me into Eden. Would give me immortality.

But then I glanced out the window of my little apartment, and wondered. To a middle- or upper-class person, someone who could enjoy modern life to the fullest, was that utopia? They had to work, but they could have happiness more easily. I thought about how old people grew to be way back when, and wondered again. People lived up to a hundred years nowadays. Was that immortality? Were humans as stupid as animals?

I wondered. Had long life taught us complacency? Boredom? Did we know, as--if he existed--God did? I wondered, and thought, no. People strive for comfort. They don't strive for knowledge.

That night, I chose an apple.

I took the black, sharp apple, and took a big bite.

The Serpent slithered away, satisfied, and I never saw him again.

~

Marianne Clarissa Jefferson was a woman who grew from nothing. She had a college degree but worked at a McDonald's for years. For much of her life, most who knew her thought her completely mad. But one day, she quit her job, stood at a street corner, and spoke. She spoke of God, and snakes, and apples. She spoke of stupidity, and told people they didn't understand what she said because they weren't the same species.

She never smiled, but she poured her heart into speaking for three months. She slept rarely, and would've looked very unhealthy if it weren't for the odd glow that seemed to surround her.

She spent three months, trying to explain what she knew. Trying to tell the residents of Eden what she had learned. But Marianne had eaten the fruit of knowledge, and would not have eternal life, and would not enter Eden or capture those who lived within. A few stopped to listen to the woman yammering outside of the garden's gates. A few slipped outside of the gate, a few took a bite of the apple. A few were lost once again. But most did not. Most remained inside the utopia.

The apple worked its powers inside of Marianne. She spoke. She taught. She preached. And, at last, after three months of pouring out her heart to people who didn't hear, she died.