MILK & HONEY

by Thul Husk
CHAPTER 1-4
​CHAPTER 1 – Garden of Eden
 
In the beginning, there was Adam and Eve, occupying an untouched land of great fertility and potential, rife with beasts that would serve the will of mankind. Adam was a capable sort, full of curiosity and good intentions. He sought knowledge, and upon surveying the land which they had been granted he began construction projects, large and small. Eve was very different from Adam, and although they cared for each other and were co-dependent it was clear to both of them that the pairing was far from an ideal match. Eve wasn’t very bright which you could discern quickly from her perpetual goofy gaze and crooked little smile. She harbored no malice in her heart, but she lacked intellectual prowess in most things, and was generally slow on the uptake.
 
Eve was ashamed of her inadequacies, but she put in an honest day’s work to prove her worth. Her work was well-accomplished and useful. Eve was a good homemaker and Adam knew that she was doing her best. Eve was also quite insecure and had low self-esteem regarding her physical appearance. It wasn’t simply that she had a goofy look, but that she had a grubby complexion by nature. Her skin was markedly darker than that of Adam, and in many places on her body her skin was splotchy and blemished. Eve also had a lack of intestinal fortitude, where she had a difficult time digesting meat which Adam had brought back from hunting expeditions. As a result, Eve was scrawny, and she often winced from physical aches and pains when she was doing her daily work.
 
Adam had noticed Eve’s disabilities but didn’t consider it a major concern. Their personalities were compatible and Eve was an honest woman – a quality which Adam valued the most. However, there were several occasions when Eve gave Adam a scare, because she often fell ill, especially during the change of seasons. He would tend to her, but neither of them had clear concepts for death or the implications of illness as a permanent lifelong condition. Adam started to imagine that there might be a time when Eve simply wouldn’t recover from her illnesses. This troubled the couple.
 
For most of the first years, Adam had focused on hunting and exploring the region, and then was diligently furthering his construction projects at home. Early on, he had constructed tools which allowed him to chop down trees in the area and work with wood materials. He had built a home that was similar to the log cabins of early pioneers in the Americas. Adam was a highly accomplished engineer who seemed to require only a short period of experimentation prior to solving a problem. Adam had also constructed weapons for hunting as well as a barn for storage. The barn was situated a short distance from the cabin at the bottom of a small incline in the land. The cabin was situated centrally in the clearing where Adam and Eve set up their homestead.
 
Eve was always curious about the world around her but lacked the brave constitution to explore it herself. She stayed close to home, never leaving the clearing where they had awoken beside each other. She was wary of the beasts roaming the region in the wildlands beyond the clearing. Eve feared that she would lack a natural rapport with the beasts and she was always concerned that they might attack her for no good reason. Adam found these fears of hers silly, but he didn’t impose his will on Eve. The couple would spend many nights with Adam telling Eve stories about his expeditions. Adam had a flair for storytelling and a keen, creative mind. He weaved tall tales about his wildland adventures which Eve listened to gleefully.
 
Eve had remembered nothing after waking up on the ground beside Adam that first day when they were placed on the land. She often asked Adam what their purpose was and she wanted to understand what they were supposed to do next after building a home. Adam recalled only one thing from the moment they were created. He felt that God had given him a series of messages, but he could only distinctly remember the very last thing God had said to him just before Adam woke up. Adam told Eve that God had said that penetrating the anus was prohibited. Every time Adam uttered this edict, it made Eve blush and then she would break out in uproarious laughter. Adam really hated that.
 
Eve wasn’t trying to mock Adam and she wasn’t challenging the word of God, it is just that she thought that this was incredibly silly and even ridiculous that of all the things the great Creator could have mentioned to them prior to leaving them to their own devices, it was that they should not play with their bodies in a particular manner. Adam didn’t question what he could remember and he took the prohibition very seriously. Eve would roll her eyes whenever Adam was irritated by Eve’s tittering and laughter. Eve had thought that a more relevant piece of information would have been something about a direction to move in, a place to find, something to build, or a creature that they were to slay. Playing with your butt seemed an issue beneath a great God to address to his first subjects.
 
Adam and Eve had reached a point in their relationship where they felt that kinship was moving beyond platonic interest. Adam wasn’t initially attracted to Eve based on her unhealthy body and her asymmetric countenance, but he had come to enjoy her company. When he had first gazed at her face during those nights of storytelling, he had seen an innocent child, but over time Eve had begun to mature. Her goofy looks had a certain seductive quality now, and Adam was beginning to find it inviting and therefore attractive. On the other hand, Eve had always found Adam handsome and thought his physical shape was quite impressive. She hadn’t made an advance because of her low self-esteem and because she felt as if their relationship was more akin to that of a parent and child. However, as she was starting to know Adam better, she could see that he was also insecure about certain things and that in some ways he looked to her for comfort and support.
 
One night, the couple decided to explore the possibilities of romance and lust. To be clear, it was a wild romp because Adam was an enthusiastic explorer and Eve was eager to own the experience as a means of permanently boosting her poor self-image. Both were very satisfied with the experience of sexual intimacy and they each had a deep-seated innate sense, or intuition perhaps, that what they had done was the true purpose of their existence. Well, sure enough a few months later Eve’s body was visibly changing, as was her attitude and demeanor. She had a healthier appetite which Adam appreciated and she hadn’t been sick since their first intimate night together. Eve was gaining confidence and even began a few personal construction projects around the home.
 
Adam was impressed and becoming closely bonded to Eve emotionally. He had never liked her scent in the past because she often had trouble with her digestion and it led to unpleasant body odors. However, Eve had turned it around and she now had an appealing scent and he noted that everything about her was healthier. Her smile was less crooked and her gaze less goofy. She was standing with better posture than usual despite the bump of her belly. Adam and Eve had independently concluded that Eve was pregnant and that there was a new person growing inside her. Adam had seen pregnant animals during some of his hunting expeditions but had never mentioned it to Eve. He had witnessed the birth of a wild boar, and he had even killed a pregnant doe, a fact he discovered once preparing the animal for consumption.
 
Adam understood the principle of procreation but didn’t want to make Eve anxious considering that the beasts were so different from mankind. Adam simply wasn’t sure if procreation worked the same way for Man as it did for the rest of the animals. However, once Eve was far along in her pregnancy, Adam shared some of his stories with Eve about the intimate nature of the animals. Eve felt more at ease about her pregnancy and considered that there was less pressure on her now that she realized it was generally the way to do things and create new life.   
 
And so time went on, with Adam and Eve growing closer and more mature. Eve gave birth to a boy and then a year later had given birth to a second son. Adam had wanted to name the firstborn “Abel” but Eve objected claiming that it sounded too similar to Adam’s name. They negotiated and agreed to name the boy, “Cain”. The second boy was named Abel, and Eve didn’t put up a fuss about that. Adam and Eve had been created with language which they had always taken for granted, but some words and sounds carried very different meaning for each of them.
 
Eve did a good job as a mother. She didn’t let her own anxieties affect how she treated the babies. The boys looked more like Adam and she felt that they would probably grow up to be more like their father than like her. She was being self-deprecating again, but she felt it was the best approach overall. As the boys got older, they did gravitate more toward their father. Cain and Abel were most interested in all of the tool-building and engineering projects which Adam had accomplished. As children, the boys made miniature versions of Adam’s barn from sticks and small branches they had collected along the edge of the clearing. Adam was proud that his boys had keen intellect and that they also had the physical sturdiness and healthiness to match his own.
 
Cain loved his mother and often felt sad when it seemed like she was left out of activities in the family. He would take the time to focus on some of his mother’s accomplishments around the home. Eve had created an extensive garden beside the cabin where depending on the season she could be growing vegetables, herbs, or even flowers. Cain took a keen interest in the garden and they spent many afternoons tending to it together. Cain also showed an appreciation for the small cot which Eve had constructed for the baby boys. He requested the right to disassemble the cot and use the materials to build something new which would be a gift from him to his mother. Eve approved and was excited to see what Cain would do with the cot.
 
Cain disassembled the cot and then constructed some new tools that had more precision than anything Adam had engineered in the past. Cain whittled down the pieces of wood and started to fix things together in a brand new configuration. Once complete, Cain presented the gift to his mother. Cain had built a small wooden cage that could be placed on the window sill inside the cabin. Eve wasn’t sure what to make of the cage, but Cain explained that it was a cage for a songbird and he suggested that they go out exploring and catch a bird that could be put in the cage. Eve was excited and applauded giddily.
 
Cain and Eve went in search of their songbird, but didn’t move much beyond the clearing. Eventually, they lured a small grey bird that had blue feathers under its wings. Cain whistled drawing the bird closer to Eve’s clutches and then she gently closed her hands around the bird and they carried it back to the cabin. Cain took the bird from his mother and placed it in the cage. It seemed agitated only at first and then sat in the cage calmly and began to tweet its merry tune. When Adam and Abel returned home, they were shown the bird in its birdcage. Abel was very impressed, and carefully examined the precision craftsmanship of the cage. Abel congratulated his brother however Adam seemed disturbed at the idea of trapping and confining the animals. Adam spoke out with authority and proclaimed that they not trap the animals, but Cain was bold enough to argue with his father. Adam was surprised because the boys were still young but they had been growing up fast. He wondered when the day would come that his sons would be the same size as their father and what this would represent for Adam’s authority as the head of the family.
 
It wasn’t just that the boys were growing and becoming physically stronger, but they were also learning and understanding the world around them. Cain had made a persuasive argument about the birdcage. He explained that the way he and his mother had been planting and growing seeds in the garden could also be done with the beasts. Adam was confused at first, thinking that Cain believed that you could plant animals in the soil and it would grow new ones. Cain wasn’t sure what he believed at first, but he conceded that animals were not the same as seeds. Cain explained that the barn had been constructed for storage and that perhaps instead of just killing beasts during hunts they might capture a few, much the same as how he and his mother had caught and then caged the songbird. The beasts could be returned to the barn and confined there.
 
Adam was starting to see the logic in his son’s argument. Cain thought that if they could capture a male and a female beast of the same species then perhaps there would be babies, much like how Cain and Abel had been created. Those babies would grow and some would become the family’s next meal while others would continue to be used for breeding. To Adam the plan seemed like a lot more work than just hunting, especially given that beyond the clearing the beasts were in abundance and most didn’t seem to have a natural fear of Man in the first place. Adam declared that he would consider Cain’s suggestion for the future.
 
Weeks later, while Cain and Eve were gardening, Adam and Abel were on their daily hunting expedition. Abel mentioned to his father that he believed they should give Cain’s idea a chance regarding caging the beasts. Adam found Abel’s appeal respectful and agreed that they would not kill on this expedition but instead would seek to capture a male and female and return the animals to the homestead where the beasts would be placed in the barn for Cain to deal with. The pair did exactly that and Cain was incredibly excited to be tasked with caring for the animals. Each week, Adam and Abel would take a day to capture animals and return them to the barn for Cain’s tending. Cain needed his mother to help with the new work. They would have to expand their garden and begin growing food that could be fed to the animals in the barn. They had to design and make harnesses for the animals and also needed to construct a fenced-in pen where the animals would roam and graze. It was a lot of work, but Cain felt that he had found his true calling.
 
On the other hand, Abel had always been most interested in hunting, and he focused all of his time and energy on his expeditions with his father. Abel was swift and could cover a lot more distance than his father. Adam would often stop and rest while Abel would continue exploring new regions that Adam had never known. When Abel found something noteworthy he would return to his father and then lead him back to the natural marvels that Abel had discovered. Adam began to realize that his sons were exceeding him in worth, but that this was a great sign. If each generation was more accomplished than the previous one, the human race would truly be a magnificent ruler of the land.
 
Life continued for several years with Cain and Eve focusing on farming and agriculture. Their gardens were extensive and magnificent, and they now had herds of cattle to tend to. Adam and Abel’s hunting expeditions were becoming unnecessary. Adam and Abel decided to use their liberated time to work on engineering projects. They helped create a rudimentary irrigation system for Cain’s farming. They constructed a second barn for Cain and Eve, and then set themselves to task on building a third barn a little farther away from the cabin, near the edge of the homestead. At first, Adam and Abel didn’t make any conclusions about the point and purpose of this much larger edifice however as the construction project got underway, they started to realize that it was a second home that they were working on.
 
There had been an elephant in the room for several years because the log cabin which Adam had built was only designed for two people to live in comfortably. When Cain and Abel were babies there was no issue, but once they had become children, the living room had to be converted to a bedroom for the boys. Adam and Eve had ceased intimate activities because it seemed inappropriate given the boys could bear witness. Now the boys had become teenagers and it was time to create a new, larger home for them to live in. Cain and Abel were always talking about the kind of fathers that they hoped to become. They were proud of Adam and wanted to repeat his success as a father. Having their own home made sense for what they considered the next natural stage in their lives.
 
The new home was completed quickly but efficiently and in an accomplished manner. Cain and Abel moved in to the new home and divided the space suitably – Cain wanted a view out the window that looked back at the barns, while Abel wanted a view on the opposite side of the house that looked into the brush because he was always thinking about the hunt and his explorations of the wildlands. Adam and Eve were now liberated to resume a private intimate life. Cain and Abel were old enough to properly understand how they had been created and they were eager to see their parents continue to make babies. They could not fathom any other way that new people would be brought into the world, and they required females in order to procreate. 
​CHAPTER 2 – Trouble in Paradise
 
Several years went by where Adam and Eve were unsuccessful at conceiving a child. Cain and Abel were becoming agitated. Adam had told his sons about God’s edict and the brothers had never considered each other as potential intimate partners but the edict made it all the more obvious that Eve was the only suitable mate that existed. Cain and Abel loved their father and violating Adam’s trust by attempting anything sexual with their mother was an abhorrent notion for the boys. They also loved their mother and hadn’t developed sexually intimate feelings for her either way. However, the boys were restless and uneasy about living their lives without a mate. It made no logical sense to them that the purpose of life was for them to be created as a dead end, and then the subsequent end of mankind.
 
Cain and Abel were as patient as they could be and then came a great moment of relief. Eve was showing and it was a time to celebrate. The months passed with great anticipation and Eve was looking quite healthy as she came to term with her third child. However, disaster struck. Eve gave birth to another boy. Adam was devastated and Eve was ashamed while feeling that somehow it had been her fault. Privately, Cain had suggested to Abel that they castrate the baby which he conjectured was necessary for having the baby convert from a boy to a girl. Abel, who had spent most of his life among the beasts as a hunter, knew that this was patently false. You could not make a girl from a boy. Boys could not grow babies inside them. Cain threatened that he was going to try anyway, and this led to Abel physically confronting his older brother.
 
Cain was the physically more powerful of the pair despite Abel being the more athletic. Cain was also the eldest and had a psychological advantage over his younger brother. Once Cain had overpowered Abel he conceded that the plan to mutilate the baby was rash and likely foolish. Cain trusted his brother’s knowledge of the beasts and decided that it was best that they search for another solution. For several years that followed, Cain would wake Abel in the middle of the night and propose that one of them distract Adam and lead him away from the homestead while the other attempt to impregnate their mother. Abel despised this kind of talk and would constantly push Cain away from his bedside without providing a verbal reply. Cain’s impatience was becoming deep frustration. His mind was going to dark places, and this reinforced his belief that it was imperative that he have a female partner who might comfort him against these creeping thoughts of dastardliness.
 
The third son had been named by Eve without help from Adam – she named him “Seth”. Adam was ashamed and devastated that he had not been able to create a daughter and that he had failed his sons, and so he had been spending a lot of time on his own after Seth’s birth. Adam feared that his own stock was too strong for Eve’s body and that Eve would never produce a female from her stock. In his deep confusion about nature and purpose, answers were no longer coming easily for Adam. This was very detrimental for Seth who was being raised primarily by his mother. Eve didn’t have a problem with this because Seth seemed more of her stock in the first place. Seth had the grubby, darker complexion and as a baby he cried often (unlike Cain and Abel at the same age), and he was sick on several occasions. Adam wasn’t around enough for the baby, while Cain and Abel had subdued resentment for Seth. The age gap between the brothers was too great and every time Cain and Abel would try to play with their baby brother, Seth would begin wailing claiming that they had hurt him. Seth had zero tolerance for pain, whether physical or psychological. Seth grew up strongly bonded to his mother and tried to only share her values.
 
The seasons passed and Cain was becoming a highly accomplished farmer, while Abel had gone back to hunting despite it not being necessary as a food supply for the family. Adam had come out of his funk and was trying to be more involved in Seth’s life but it was too little too late. Seth lacked a keen mind and preferred to skip merrily through the garden chasing bugs and butterflies. Seth had no interest in building, and he whined profusely when asked to do any kind of work or chores. Adam attempted to turn things around but Seth ignored his father’s authority and would simply run to his mother and hide between her legs when Adam was attempting to instill self-discipline in his child. Adam was beginning to give up on Seth, but he then turned his energy toward the task of making a girl.
 
Seth was now a young child while his older brothers had become full-grown young men. If too many years passed then Cain and Abel would be quite old by the time Eve’s daughters would be mature enough for procreation. Cain continued to wake Abel in the night to suggest raping their mother and Abel continued to ignore the pleas. Adam had concluded that he couldn’t make his stock weaker but that he could make it more sensitive. He started to help Eve with all of her daily work and chores. He engaged her in conversations about her emotions and feelings. He even engineered rudimentary writing tools and fabric scrolls so that he could keep a diary where he expressed himself in emotional terms and sentimental language. Adam felt that embracing his feminine side might alter his stock allowing him to produce a female child.
 
Cain and Abel noticed their father’s behavior and were disturbed by it. They conjectured correctly that he was making an honest attempt to fix the family’s dire situation, yet in the process the brothers were also losing respect for their father. Cain thought that Adam was becoming “fey” – developing personality traits that would doom the man to failure. Abel agreed and believed that Adam was also becoming a “git” – a contemptible person, and fool. In fact, the brothers agreed that these words were apt and combined them to describe Adam’s new persona as a “feygit”. During the day, Seth would be skipping around the clearing of the homestead and when he would get in the way of Cain’s work, Cain would yell at his little brother also calling the boy a feygit. Eve would hear this and it broke her heart. Their family was no longer the loving unit that it had once been.
 
Eve noted what Adam was doing in trying to repair the situation, and she respected that he had completely altered his personality in order to change the nature of their relationship and maybe help in putting the feminine on top. But Eve didn’t believe that this kind of superficial behaviour could actually change the birds and the bees. And so she considered that the problem hadn’t been that Adam was too aggressive and had to become more emotional, but rather that she was too emotional and had to become more aggressive. She had always been nervous about the beasts and had a poor rapport with them, but since working closely beside Cain on the farm she had come to understand animals a little better. She decided that it was important for her to venture out to the region beyond the clearing and explore the wildlands, which was something she had never done before.
 
One night, Eve called Adam and her elder sons to the cabin and explained that she had to go on this adventure alone. Abel protested because he knew firsthand how dangerous the wildland beasts could be. He feared that Eve would be maimed or worse, and that the possibility of her making female babies would be lost forever. Cain did not object to Eve’s plan and Adam encouraged it. Adam was sick to death of pretending to be interested in emotional thinking. He wasn’t convinced that the effort alone was making a difference anyway. He felt that what he had done was time well spent because he understood Eve’s nature better but Eve’s suggestion to adventure made Adam believe that Eve would then understand him better. Perhaps this was the secret to success, namely mutual understanding and respect.
 
So, the next morning Cain, Abel, and Adam made sure that Eve had all of the necessary equipment for her adventure. She bravely set out on her own. Later that evening, the men discussed the potential disasters that lay ahead and Cain volunteered to follow Eve’s trail and keep an eye on her from a distance. Adam approved Cain’s suggestion although Abel was suspicious. Abel feared that Cain was using the opportunity in order to seduce or even rape their mother. Abel let his strong emotions subside and decided to trust in the goodness of his older brother. Cain left the homestead before dawn and found his mother’s tracks within a few hours. He figured that it wouldn’t take long to catch up to her.
 
Eve was enjoying her adventure and had not encountered any dangerous beasts in the first day on her own in the wildlands beyond the clearing. She was gathering seeds and herbs during her hikes and was beginning to regret that this was her first expedition of such a fertile and fascinating world. She started to consider that Seth’s problems of witlessness might be solved through them doing expeditions together – there was so much to encounter and even more to think about afterward. Eve was lost in her thoughts and not paying close attention to her environment. She climbed over a series of rocks to continue toward a break in the treeline, but was suddenly flanked by a growling mass of sharp teeth and black fur. She couldn’t recognize which of the beasts it was that was now bearing down on her. She dropped her pack and took her spear in both hands, thrusting it forward, while stomping her foot, and growling herself. Suddenly, there was the sound of a tree cracking behind the black beast. Feeling pinned-down, the beast shifted to flight mode and took off deeper into the thick brush away from Eve.
 
Cain had been close by the entire time. He was likely the reason that the black beast had approached Eve in the first place based on the alternate path he had taken in order to maintain higher ground and vantage over his mother’s movements. The beast must have sensed danger by being flanked. Cain figured that smashing the tree he was leaning against would spook the beast and indeed the gamble paid off. Eve was spent by the thrilling experience. She continued to the break in the trees and looked across an open plain. The vista was majestic and she decided to take a rest before continuing on. Cain was now set up to safely watch over his mother. He waited at a reasonable distance, but as Eve took a nap and fell asleep, Cain noticed a snake creep up out of the tall grass of the plain and crawl up around his mother’s throat. Eve remained asleep and was unable to protect herself. Cain was frozen in fear unable to decide whether to give away his surveillance mission, or to wait and hope that the snake would move on peacefully.
 
The snake had coiled itself around Eve’s throat therefore Cain’s intervention could easily have created greater problems. He felt there was a good chance that the snake would ignore a sleeping woman and just move on. Those moments for Cain passed and felt like a lifetime. Every second of anticipation was filled with thoughts of a thousand different fears, possible actions, and unintended consequences. Cain remained still.
 
Eve was oblivious and was in a deep sleep, dreaming about the black beast. In her dream, the black beast inched closer to her, with fiery eyes and dripping fangs. Just as it was about to pounce on her, Cain entered her field of vision in a form larger than life, with a wooden cage in hand. Suddenly, the black beast was in the cage, locked away tightly. The transformation just happened instantaneously as these things do in the strange logic of dreams. And although Eve knew that this was the black beast in the cage it no longer looked like a mass of snarling teeth, fur, and muscle. Instead, it was clearly a black bird that was in the cage and the bird seemed oblivious to Eve’s fears. Cain moved past Eve in her dream as if gliding on air while paying no attention to his mother, yet he had saved her life. She turned and realized that she was now magically transported back to the homestead. Things were abstract and out of place. Cain’s barn was now the log cabin which somehow she knew to be true, even though it made no sense for two distinct things to be the same thing.
 
In Eve’s dream Adam was doing Cain’s daily farming duties. Adam looked up and waved to Eve as if she were too far away to be spoken to. The distance should have been small, but surreally the field that Adam was tilling was at the bottom of a steep hill at a great distance. This oneiric space didn’t make any sense at all. Eve began walking toward Adam but was suddenly moving along the edge of the clearing where she had entered to the wildlands when beginning her adventure a couple of days earlier. Eve turned around and a snake slithered down her shoulder.
 
Eve wasn’t shocked by the presence of the snake but it seemed that the snake could speak and use language. Eve expressed to the snake that she had known of no beast that could speak. The snake replied to Eve that the bird’s song was a way of speaking and that all beasts had their own ways of communicating. However, the snake did admit that he was a rare breed. The snake seemed to know what Adam and Eve had been going through over the years. The snake continued to speak with Eve and it referenced God’s edict. Eve was uncomfortable but still curious, although she certainly wasn’t ready to titter the way she would when Adam spoke of God’s edict. She had been standing still while speaking with the snake but was now suddenly lying down. The snake was still in front of her and explained to her that God’s edict would have to be violated in order to “fertilize” her womb and change its “culture” so that it might produce female babies. The snake asked Eve if she understood, and Eve replied that she did.
 
Cain was still watching his mother sleeping but was relieved to see the serpent uncoil from around her throat and continue up into the tree that Eve was leaning against. Cain gave a big sigh and for a moment any of his dark thoughts about seducing or violating his mother had passed. He was now most concerned with her immediate welfare. That felt good for him as if a great burden had been lifted. Shortly after, Eve woke from her dream with no awareness that the snake had brought her so close to mortal danger. Eve rose to her feet and had a look of determination about her. Cain anticipated that his mother would continue on her journey but instead Eve collected her pack and spear, and then headed back the way she had arrived.
 
Cain followed for a time and then realized that Eve was heading home so he raced ahead and waited for her there. Eve had only been gone for a couple of days but she felt that the dream had provided her with the information she needed to fix the problems of her family. When she got back to the homestead, everyone was excited to see her. That night they had a great feast and for the first time since before Seth was born, they felt like a family again.
 
That evening, Abel was the one to wake Cain and ask what had happened. Cain explained the entire adventure reporting on the black beast and the wily snake. Abel listened intently and felt that the whole experience represented something good for the family. The brothers went back to sleep and they slept well. Meanwhile, over in the cabin, Adam had asked Eve to tell him all about her adventures in the wildlands. She told of the black beast but also of collecting herbs, seeds, and flowers. Adam was proud of her and commended her bravery in the face of such ominous danger. Eve treated her gathering as more exciting than the dangerous encounter with the black beast. Adam laughed at how nonchalant Eve could be about the dangers of the wildlands. They also slept well that night.
​CHAPTER 3 – Forbidden Knowledge
 
The next day was surprising for the uplifted family because a storm had blown in with violent gusts of powerful winds. By midday, there was torrential downpour with lightning storms and the sky had been cast pitch black. Cain and Abel were working diligently to batten down the hatches, securing the barns and making sure all of the animals were locked up in their pens. Eve was standing outside the cabin with Seth who was clinging to her leg out of tremendous fear. Eve looked up at the black clouds and when lightning struck it immediately reminded her of the white fangs and dark fur of the black beast. Suddenly, Eve felt wetness against her leg and looked up again to see if the awning around the cabin had been damaged. She then realized that it was Seth who from fear had wet himself. Eve took Seth inside to clean him up.
 
Adam had been on an expedition in the morning retracing Eve’s steps in order to locate the black beast that he was determined to slaughter. He was now racing back to the homestead in order to help prepare for the worst storm of his life experience. He arrived in time to shut the doors on the second barn before some of the cattle might have run off. Cain and Abel were still over at the other barn securing it. The men convened back at the cabin and reported-in on what more was needed to be done. In that fateful moment, a lightning bolt of brilliant intensity and great fury struck the house of Cain and Abel. A fire ignited in different locations along one side of the house and the men simply stood and watched as the flames grew to engulf the entire building. There was nothing that they could do and there was nothing that they said to each other about it. Eventually, Adam turned away and entered the cabin. Cain and Abel remained outside standing in silence until the event had passed and the house was nothing more than crumbling rubble and billows of soot.
 
The storm was leveling off and although the winds were still sheer and the rain pounded down from the darkened skies, the shocking lightning and thunder had ceased. Eve put Seth to bed and then suggested that Cain and Abel use the cabin for the night. Eve told her eldest sons that she and Adam would spend the night in the loft of the main barn. Although Abel was inclined to protest, he sensed that his mother wasn’t just excusing her and Adam for the convenience of their sons. Abel maintained his silence while Cain had already caught his mother’s drift. She had the same look in her eye that she had had out on the plain when she rose to her feet and made a swift return trip back to the homestead. She was a woman on a mission. At this point, Cain only cared about one thing, which was to have a mate and start a family - his mother was the key to that destiny.
 
Adam didn’t put up any resistance and he was numb from having witnessed the destruction of the home of his two sons. Eve collected some of their belongings and led Adam over to the barn. Inside the barn, the cattle had pens for resting however there was a short wooden ladder that led to a loft where Cain kept a supply of hay. Cain had also created a small study for himself in the loft area and even had a cot set up. He had arranged this living space one night after waking Abel to ask once more about solving their mutual problem. He knew that his request to violate their mother was unreasonable but it still enraged him that Abel would not at least consider the idea and work through it with him. The living space in the loft was a retreat for Cain so that he wouldn’t do something that he might later regret, such as attack his brother or even go ahead and approach his mother indecently.
 
While Adam and Eve were setting up in the loft, Cain and Abel were already making plans to rebuild their home. Seth was still sleeping through the storm and was dreaming. Like Eve, he too was dreaming about the homestead and the beasts of the land. In his dream, Seth was skipping along the edge of the clearing on a bright, sunny day. He was humming and singing a little tune while passing by the trees which seemed to be all foliage and no bark or branches. The waves of foliage undulated and brushed against Seth as he skipped past. It was almost as if he were wading through the water with gentle waves pushing against him. Seth reached out in his dream world to feel the pillowy wisps of leaves, and he then caught a single leaf in his hand. He looked at the leaf and it was in fact a butterfly, but the butterfly was also a face, and the face was trying to talk to him.
 
Seth was curious to know what the face wanted, and the face said to Seth that it was a snake, and Seth could kind of understand that being true. Beneath the face, Seth sensed the body of a snake that was now pressing all along the length of Seth’s arm as if he were standing against his mother’s body the way he always did when he was frightened. Seth understood that this butterfly-leaf-face was a snake as it had proclaimed, but Seth couldn’t understand how the body of the snake that pressed against his arm could have a head that was a separate thing from its body. The interrogative thoughts then led Seth to notice that there was no longer a butterfly-leaf-face and that the snake head and body was simply Seth’s hand and arm. Seth wasn’t anxious about the transformation. The snake told Seth to follow his hand and in his dream he turned to see the farm, and his hand which was now the snake’s head, pointed toward the main barn that had the loft. The snake said to Seth that in the barn is where Seth was made. Seth remembered that prophecy of the snake as he awoke from the bizarre dream.
 
Now awake, Seth was calm and shuffled over to his mother’s bedside like he did most nights when he had woken from troubled sleep, except this time it was his eldest brother, Cain, laying there in place of Eve. Beside Cain was Abel, who was also asleep. Seth seemed confused which of course made sense given that he was already fast asleep prior to Eve announcing that she and Adam would spend the night in the barn. After contemplating the bizarre juxtaposition, Seth moved over to the window which looked out at the barn and he saw a light was shining inside. He decided to venture out and investigate despite it being the middle of the night and the storm having continued, although abating its intensity.
 
Inside the barn, Adam and Eve had been talking for several hours. Adam was upset because Eve was trying to challenge God’s edict. Eve explained to Adam that she had come to realize that God’s edict wasn’t a prohibition but instead that its violation was a necessary evil and that the prohibition was only a “warning” to explain that there would be a punishment. Adam didn’t understand Eve’s distinction, and he argued that Eve was admitting that she knew violating the edict was wrong and would be punished. Eve continued her line of argumentation now explaining that the only way to make a female child would be through violating the edict. Adam truly didn’t understand what Eve was driving at.
 
Adam was confused much the same as when Cain had explained how raising livestock was akin to growing a garden. Adam felt that Eve was suggesting that female babies are made through anal copulation. Eve laughed at Adam’s confusion, which only made him more upset. She was confident in her understanding of how things worked. She explained that violating the edict was simply the first step and that Adam would then “fertilize” her womb afterward in order to alter its “culture” and prepare it for a female baby. Eve used Cain’s farming as an example, reminding Adam of how they had learned in years gone by that by spreading animal manure across the soil it had fertilized the soil and had allowed them to grow vegetables in greater abundance.
 
None of this was sitting right with Adam. Adam also had experience with fecal matter and discovered that it was very dangerous to keep open wounds unclean and that it would lead to infections. He had seen it with the animals that fought each other for territory and then crawled off to die when their injuries were too severe to overcome. Adam had witnessed a boar collapse in a pile of its own waste and the wounds exposed to the waste had festered and become infected far faster than the wounds that were not exposed to that variety of filth. Adam tried to explain this lesson to Eve but she just looked up to the sky and shook her head indignantly. For the first time in years, Adam saw the crooked little smile, goofy little gaze and silly little girl that had been Eve so long ago.
 
That vision in some ways disgusted him, but at the same time turned him on greatly. It recalled a time of innocence for the couple. It reminded him of the first passions he had experienced while being with her. Eve now reached out for Adam and asked that he simply trust her this one time and that he believe that she was the one to know best. Adam was now caught up in a moment of weakness. He was still reeling from the devastation of the storm, he was still unnerved by his fears of the black beast which Eve had encountered, he was still ashamed of his fathering of Seth, and he was still numb from the long-term issues of not producing a daughter for Cain and Abel. Yet, he reminded himself that Eve’s adventure had been for the purposes of solving that latter problem, and that perhaps it was worth trusting in a novel idea she professed to have developed during that journey. To violate the edict of God seemed unfathomable, but at the same time there was value in the idea of Eve’s suggestion that claimed breaking the prohibition simply signaled an impending punishment that was necessary. Adam considered that perhaps God had acted proactively and that the punishment was the destruction of Cain and Abel’s house. Perhaps, this even represented that God had willfully given permission to violate the edict.
 
Eve made one final appeal and explained that she felt the ‘punishment’ was simply that a female would be produced instead of a male. Listening to this explanation made Adam very sad. Eve mentioned that Adam, Cain, and Abel were clearly superior stock to her and always had been, and that another female was most likely to be more like her than like them. Adam was about to argue for how this couldn’t be the case because Seth was a boy yet more like Eve, but he also blamed himself for Seth’s ways so it seemed unfair to make the comparison. He simply silenced Eve with a kiss. At this point, Adam was angry at God. Adam believed that Eve was a sweet woman who had lived her entire life trying hard and accomplishing, yet always believing that she was lesser than the rest of her family. He resented that God would make her that way. He was mad that God would tell him nothing specific that was helpful, and that God would provide no guidance on how Adam should make his family happy.
 
Adam wasn’t going to submit any longer to restrictions or prohibitions, and instead he was going to try anything and everything that might help him to fix his family’s situation and thus ensure the future of mankind. And so Adam agreed to trust in Eve’s idea. He willfully violated the edict and found great pleasure in doing so. However, Adam and Eve were unaware that the violation was being witnessed by young Seth who had already snuck into the barn moments earlier. Seth was able to see what his father was doing to his mother, and Seth was fulfilling the prophecy of the snake from his dream when he ventured into the barn – this act in the barn was the discovery for how the boy was created. Seth’s curiosity was satisfied, and he decided to leave the barn prior to getting caught by his parents, yet this perverse primal scene would scar his fundamental psychology forevermore.
 
Adam and Eve continued their lustful acts, and after the violation of the edict, as recommended, Adam continued more conventionally thus “fertilizing” Eve’s womb. After completion, Adam rolled over as much as he could on the cot which was much smaller than his own bed. The bed felt foreign and wrong, and the sex act also felt foreign and wrong. He got up and descended from the loft and went outside to scrub himself clean. He was feeling itchy and places on his body stung that shouldn’t and which had never done so before. He immediately felt that something had changed in his life and in his relationship with Eve. This life he had been granted by God had provided him the opportunity to learn and grow through knowledge, but he had now taken everything that he knew and willfully cast it aside based on spurious superstitious, weak conjecture, and overwhelming desperation. He felt like a fool.
 
Adam returned to Eve, but Eve also felt like a fool. She also wanted to go clean herself but was afraid that this would be like washing away the manure from the soil that got fertilized in her garden. She was feeling pain and discomfort but tried to ignore it. She needed to give the snake’s plan a chance because there was nothing else left to try. The couple went to sleep without saying a word to each other.
 
The next few weeks were dismal. Eve had an infection which she was having a terrible time clearing up. She even confided in Cain who had learned something about herbs and holistic medicines. He ventured out to collect some herbs and roots that might help his mother. Adam and Abel were working on rebuilding the house and were oblivious to Eve’s suffering. Seth was starting to become very curious about his body after what he had witnessed in the barn. His innocent days of skipping through the fields catching the butterflies were now behind him.
 
Cain returned with herbs and worked on preparing a topical scrub. He even helped apply it to his mother. Seeing the spread of the infection repelled Cain and although he had a cast-iron stomach and had never once thrown-up, he had to excuse himself from the cabin for fear of losing control over his intestinal fortitude. Cain was disgusted by his mother when he should have been deeply concerned about her health. He wanted to know what she had done to cause this awful infection. However, Eve refused to confess. Later that day, Cain went over to see Adam and Abel who were still working on the new house. Unprovoked, Cain violently erupted at them.
 
Adam couldn’t understand what was wrong with Cain who was ranting and yelling gibberish. He approached Cain to comfort him with an embrace, but Cain lashed out and struck Adam across the face roughly. Adam was shocked and Abel enraged. Adam worked to hold back Abel as they watched Cain drop to his knees, holding his head in his hands, and weeping uncontrollably. It was the worst moment of their lives.
 
That night Adam and Eve returned to the cabin to sleep in their bed. Of course, Seth was too old to share the space, but that problem had yet to be solved. Cain and Abel agreed to sleep in the loft of the barn, while they hoped to finish the new house over the next few days. Eve had a sense that not only had her plan for conceiving a female baby failed but that the infection may have destroyed her reproductive organs. Adam couldn’t sleep after everything that had happened and simply closed his eyes and laid still, numb from the mixture of confusion and regret.
 
Abel was in the barn settling in for the night, but was irritated by the sounds and smells of the livestock. Cain too was restless. He made a move for the barn door and Abel sprung to his feet, jumping down from the loft and racing out after his brother. Abel grabbed his brother and pulled him around to face him. Cain had a mad fury in his eyes – a kind of possession that Abel had never seen even in the wildest beasts when they were fighting for their very survival. Cain announced that he was going up to the cabin to have his way with Eve and that he was no longer waiting for anyone’s permission.
 
Abel was terrified but refused to cower to the wickedness of his brother and those dark machinations which were now driving Cain toward absolute madness. Abel struck Cain and a wrestling match ensued mixed with punches and choke holds. The brothers were each fighting for their lives and their futures. Cain had a few opportunities to get up and continue marching on the cabin, but Abel would not cease in his pursuit. He continued to drag Cain down. Finally, Cain realized that he would first have to incapacitate Abel prior to continuing toward the cabin to execute on his heinous plan. He got behind Abel as they struggled and then wrapped his strong arms around his younger brother’s neck. Cain then wrapped his legs around Abel and brought him down to the ground. Cain continued to choke out Abel until Abel stopped struggling.
 
When the resistance ceased, Cain relaxed his hold. He uncoiled himself from around Abel’s body and pushed his brother off of him. Abel fell limply face-first into the mud outside the barn where they had fought. Cain snapped out of his rage and turned to his brother assuming that Abel was simply knocked unconscious and would come to in a few moments. Cain pulled his brother over but Abel was a lifeless mass. Cain realized what he had done. He said nothing and whatever ideas he had had about storming the cabin were now but a fleeting thought lost in the cascade of time. Cain went back to his loft in the barn and gathered some of his belongings. He passed by his brother’s corpse one last time and left the homestead never to return.
 
Cain wandered for the rest of his life but never faced his father over what had taken place. Cain realized that he had become something so much less than what his father had made him and that he had no right to face his father, for Cain should be viewed as a stranger in his father’s eyes and any greater recognition than that was the gravest injustice to his family that he had once loved dearly.
 
Adam found Abel’s body the next morning and after searching for Cain in the barns concluded that his eldest son had left for good. Adam buried Abel away from the homestead and committed to never telling Eve what had happened. Instead, he explained to her that Cain and Abel had ventured out together in order to explore the entire land in hopes of finding other people, especially mates. Adam assured Eve that their eldest sons were safe on the journey and that Cain and Abel had decided to leave without saying goodbye to their mother only because it was too painful and they didn’t want her to feel that she was at all to blame for not producing female babies. Adam claimed that he felt hopeful that his sons would return some day with families in tow.
 
Eve had never known Adam to be dishonest, but something made her believe that whatever had actually happened was far less hopeful than how Adam had presented it. Adam was getting on in years but found enough energy to finish the house which had been started. Adam even furnished the house with beds and other items that made it seem lived-in. Eve worked hard to teach Seth how to do Cain’s farming work and although the boy whined constantly, he did manage to do an adequate job. Seth never aspired toward adventure and had no interest in learning the ways of hunting. He also had no aptitude for engineering and as things broke down at the homestead, he was unable to help with repairs. Adam’s energy was completely flat and he was looking long in the tooth. He was depressed every day, realizing how he had failed as a father and as a patriarch. He had failed as a man, and he had failed as a person. He daydreamed about being able to go back in time and just stop everything prior to Seth being born.
 
Adam was broken, and one day not long after Abel’s murder Adam simply didn’t wake up. Eve thought that maybe it was a joke and she had hoped that Adam would suddenly open his eyes and rise with the kind of exuberance he had once had in life. Instead, his body remained lifeless. To be honest, he wasn’t that old and not even middle-aged, but Adam had simply lost the will to live. Eve found Adam’s scroll diary shortly after his death and picked some lines from it which she liked. She then used Cain’s precision tools to chisel the words into a headstone. She used the headstone to mark Adam’s grave down by the new house. It was now up to Eve to take care of the homestead and she only had Seth to help her with all the work.
 
A few years went by and Seth had become a teen. Eve had focused a lot of her time on herbal medicine and treatments, and she was healthier than ever before, including her reproductive organs. Being the head of the household brought a self-confidence she had never experienced before. Seth had been sleeping in the loft of the barn after Adam had passed away. Seth had now developed several deep-seated psychological issues. Not only was he occasionally having sex with some of the farm animals, but he was also deriving pleasure from torturing and sometimes killing them. Eve didn’t properly understand what was happening to her son.
 
One night, Seth left the barn and marched over to the cabin and entered. He approached his mother who was fast asleep in her bed. He picked her up and carried her down to the new house and took her inside. Seth now laid his mother down in the bed Adam had built. While Eve was still half-asleep, Seth began penetrating his mother. As Eve began to wake she realized what was happening but did nothing to stop it. Once Seth was finished he rolled over and turned away from his mother. However, a few moments later, he rolled back and clung onto her the way he had done as a child when he was frightened.
 
Eve wasn’t angry with Seth and she accepted what he had done. In fact, he repeated the act every night afterward, that is to say he left the barn, and carried his mother from the cabin to the new house where he then had sex with her as she pretended to be asleep. Finally, one night Eve was already in the bed at the new house. Seth went up to the cabin again looking for his mother and upon finding that bed empty he went over and investigated the new house where he saw her waiting there for him. At first he was scared, not sure whether she was upset with him. He approached the bed slowly and Eve pulled back the sheet in an inviting manner. Seth crawled into bed with his mother but simply clung to her body like the frightened, weak child he had been. Although, they didn’t have sex that night they would continue to sleep together in the new house and Eve now consented to copulating with her son.
 
In fact, Eve started to conceive again. She and Seth had six children together, including four girls. Seth made for a terrible and abusive father. He sexually violated all of his boys regularly and raped his daughters nightly. He impregnated his daughters, and of course his two sons also impregnated their sisters having learned their father’s revolting ways. The family grew over several generations and Eve lived to be a great, great grandmother. As it turned out, there had never been any other people in the world and as much as the progeny of Eve and Seth had often had severe genetic disorders and disabilities, eventually through the sheer determination of nature there were children born of their stock that had the capacity to be relatively functional and capable people, although all seemed to be dominated by wicked thoughts and devious motivations.
 
Seth had taught his family nothing but abuse, so everything remotely productive that they learned had either come from Eve or from what they were able to figure out on their own in spite of their weak constitutions, poor character, and limited intellect. Eve and Seth never taught their progeny about Adam, Cain, and Abel – only Adam’s headstone remained as evidence that good men had once lived at the homestead in the clearing.
 
This was the Garden of Eden and if you are a devout Christian, Muslim, or Jew then this is your creationist myth. The other one that you were told through scripture simply doesn’t add up and make any sense. Therefore, for true believers the human race must be understood as being descendants of Eve and Seth, where we carry in our fundamental makeup the capacity to be incredibly ignorant, and cruel, and poor. Yet, for some of us those expressions of Adam, Cain, and Abel are irrepressible, and this is why we have good things in this oft bad world.
 
However, as mentioned at the very start, this reworking of the Garden of Eden creationist myth wasn’t intended to directly intervene with Abrahamic-based faiths, and instead was implemented as support for the fantasy reality that I had been building during my term as a “paranoid schizophrenic”. This Garden of Eden tale was in fact not about the origins of our human race and the start of our planet Earth based in a physical universe, but instead was a tale about the origins of cosmic evil forces that exist corporeally beyond the confines of physical laws. The Garden of Eden tale that we are familiar with turns out to be nothing more than a flattering rendition for the one that I knew, which was the true story that was also the real origins for one particular population of cosmic evil forces. Those cosmic evil forces had found it amusing to skew their own history and retell it for our mankind in ways that left out the obvious degradation, depravity, and tragedy implied by the circumstances of beginning a race rigidly with but a single coupling. 
 
You see the progeny of Eve and Seth continued to populate that world generation after generation until eventually one man named Flynn committed an atrocity so abhorrent that the land itself died and fundamentally changed the nature of that reality for all who existed there. My question for you is to first ask whether you can handle and stomach a description of true evil? True evil isn’t serial killers such as, Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. True evil isn’t movie villains such as, Pinhead or Freddy Krueger, nor is it what we see depicted in a Bosch painting or described in Dante’s Inferno. Those things are child’s play – characters with measures of compunction. That variety of evil has a human face and cannot be articulated without referencing human sensibilities and values. Whereas, true evil has a describable character which we often choose to turn away from to the point that our notions of Hell are formed in a way that is dishonest and which neglects to account for an absolute lack of mercy which characterizes the will of true evil. There is something inherently good about humanity, but there is nothing genuinely human about true evil.
 
Many seek the entertainment of stories because it is relaxing and if they wanted to know horror, they would instead read the newspapers. But, when you are a paranoid schizophrenic the cosmic evil forces are imminent and they pervade all forms of communication, including entertainment. They are a thing to be addressed and solved in order to free your mind, and perhaps even your soul. Once becoming schizophrenic, you cannot continue life peacefully until you have thoroughly addressed how evil is impacting your thoughts and your existence.
​CHAPTER 4 – Flynn
 
Returning to the story of Flynn, who having been born countless generations after the time of Eve and Seth, had developed into a man not so unlike his ancestors, and therefore not so unlike most of his relatives and the people around him. Flynn was wicked, and cruel, and sick. He was preoccupied with morbid fascinations and he derived genuine pleasure from the anguish of others. The population of this world – a world created by cosmic evil forces – was growing to the point that homesteads like that of Adam and Eve had become large hut-based tribes, or had then formed into filthy villages and dilapidated towns. This was not Earth, at least not the Earth we know and where we live. This was not the human race, at least not the human race that we are. Instead, this Garden of Eden was the origins of one notable population of cosmic evil forces in existence.
 
This Garden of Eden was in a world where life was experienced physically and corporeally but which was not always confined by physical laws. In time, this world would be able to shed the restrictions of some physical laws and begin articulating experience through eldritch magicks based in mental conjuring. In this Garden of Eden, Flynn had been the first to learn of this capacity for magicks. The evil of Flynn was often status quo for this world, yet he aspired to do something “greater”, or perhaps we should say, most notorious. He hoped to make an offering to the essence of evil which would bring about a moment of pure bliss for him. Only through experiencing pure bliss in an act of evil was Flynn convinced that he could know that evil was true and right, that it was justified, and that it would go unpunished throughout the cosmic order of time.
 
Flynn had violated his own mother and impregnated her to create a daughter that was also in a sense, his sister. Once his daughter hit puberty, Flynn then murdered his mother in a most grizzly manner, ultimately intending to leave her remains for the black beasts to feast on. Flynn took his daughter and left the large hut-based tribe where he had been living, and where he had been born. The tribe had a population of almost one thousand, but there were towns scattered throughout the land which had at least ten times that many people. Flynn wanted access to greater vice. Every wicked act quickly became paltry for him. He and his daughter entered the town of Fester which was, and always had been, in a state of ruin and decay.
 
Flynn began prostituting his daughter and when she wasn’t with a customer, he often kept her in a painful full-body harness composed of coarse leather and jagged metal clasps. This Garden of Eden still operated on a barter system, where most trade involved food stuffs, and usually meat. The meat of the black beasts was most valuable because although their population had grown enormously since the time of Eve and Seth, the black beasts were still formidable and incredibly tough to kill. On the other hand, the meat of people was the least valuable because it was common as a staple of diets.
 
Flynn was careful about who he let violate his daughter because he didn’t want anyone taking it easy on her and being kind through words or actions. He actively sought out the most awful and vile scum, with Fester being a town renowned for harbouring exactly those types. On his first night in Fester, Flynn caught himself thinking back on how he had snuffed out his mother to begin his journey. He had found a venomous snake at the outskirts of his tribe’s territory and placed it in the sack which he carried with him everywhere. The sack was made from the hide of a black beast which Flynn found fascinating as he wondered how the beast had been captured and killed. He had stolen the sack off of a rotting corpse, thus its origins would remain a mystery. Flynn carried the snake back to his hut where he proceeded to feed it to his mother while she was sleeping.
 
Truth be told, the story is far more grizzly and vile than I care to say and what he did with the snake was not dissimilar to a tailor weaving a needle and thread to produce a fine garment. Flynn then butchered the meticulously mutilated body, and instead of throwing the chunks to the beasts, he decided to sell off the slabs of meat in exchange for scrolls that the village elders possessed. Flynn’s mother had been a powerful member of the tribe, but many of her former allies now sought consumption of the sumptuous flesh of a betrayed political rival. Scrolls weren’t valuable in the tribe where Flynn came from, however they were very valuable in other places in the land. In the town of Fester, the Scum Lord LeVil, was collecting scrolls with hopes of one day finding the most coveted, “Scroll of Adam”.
 
The legend claimed that Eve had tucked the most coveted scroll away somewhere safe, but that on it was written a recounting of Adam’s dream about the Fever Snake. Everyone in this land – this Garden of Eden - at some point dreamed of the Fever Snake (as had Eve and Seth, of course), and it was a menace to their consciousness. Knowing of the first such dream could potentially be helpful for protecting one’s mind from the ravages and curses of the Fever Snake. As previously mentioned, Eve and Seth had never told anyone about Adam however Cain through his travels had left written records which recounted the early days with his family. A legend had been constructed from that written record, and one whose events were mostly apocryphal.
 
Most scrolls were made of human skin, typically that of small children or even babies, however, Scum Lord LeVil of Fester didn’t care about those kinds of contemporary scrolls and he was only truly interested in the most ancient artifacts. Flynn had traded his mother’s meat for scrolls that were clearly not of the era LeVil was interested in. However, these scrolls were tough finds which would allow Flynn to convince gatekeepers in Fester to let him enter based on his claim of knowledge for where to find more ancient artifacts. The ruse was a gamble for Flynn and he realized that raiding parties from Fester might turn against him and then turn him into a human punching bag, literally. It could be years of slow torture after they amputated all of your limbs and hung you by your tongue in their taverns and bordellos.
 
Yet, Flynn had confidence that his brand of evil was wicked enough to handle the worst Fester had to offer. In addition, you scored brownie points in this Garden of Eden when showing extreme cruelty to your own children. Although this world had become the epitome of evil, fostering children as allies was typically the only way to ensure your own survival. Small groups of parents would breed and support each other defensively until the children were old enough to know how to fight, survive, and protect kin. Anyone willing to throw their own children under the bus was considered ruthlessly hard-core, or perhaps completely mad. People wondered what else you were capable of.
 
Another way to gain entry to places like Fester was to serve up your own body as a sexual object for the raider parties or scum lords. In a world of hate and evil, love for women, children, and family is anathema. The only “love” that exists is a carnal encounter between two men – and the Fever Snake made sure of this. Women and children existed as victims of violence and sexual violence especially. For people of our world, this Garden of Eden was the definition of Hell.
 
Flynn spent a week in Fester and the raiding parties agreed to do business with him by spending time with his daughter for their gratification. By the end of the week, Flynn had fostered some allegiance and was able to request a meeting with the Scum Lord LeVil. Flynn was granted access to LeVil’s private bunker at the top of the hill where Fester had been built. LeVil’s bunker was a never-ending hedonistic blood orgy of pleasure and pain. There was constant traffic on the main floor as new victims were delivered and splayed out for revelers. LeVil hadn’t noticed Flynn at first marking him as a common slaver that had brought a single young female to be added to the festivities. LeVil then noted the elaborate harness which Flynn had crafted for his daughter. The scum lord was impressed and beckoned the pair over to his throne area.
 
LeVil wanted Flynn to offer his daughter as tribute to the scum lord but Flynn adamantly refused. LeVil had an instinct to physically brutalize Flynn for his insolence however he sensed something unique in Flynn. LeVil could tell that Flynn had encountered the Fever Snake but had rejected the knowledge. In essence, Flynn was likely the only grown person of the land who was not cursed. Flynn confirmed this for LeVil and explained his quest for the Scroll of Adam. LeVil was fascinated and agreed to share his knowledge of ancient scrolls and the legend of Eve and Seth, but only if Flynn agreed to hand over his daughter to the scum lord in exchange for the knowledge.
 
Flynn had no intention of agreeing to the terms however he did require the knowledge LeVil held. Flynn counter-offered that he would keep his daughter until after he found the Scroll of Adam, but that if LeVil’s knowledge uncovered that scroll then Flynn promised to return to Fester and his daughter would belong to LeVil from that point forward. LeVil didn’t care about the girl, but instead wanted to break Flynn to his will and although the counter-offer wasn’t satisfying in that respect the scum lord did agree to it. LeVil led Flynn and his daughter into the depths of the bunker where crumbling rock gave way to dripping blood from the rooms above. Flynn suspected that it wouldn’t take much of a ruckus for the ceilings to cave in and crush everyone in the catacombs below.
 
The catacombs of the bunker led to a chamber which the trio now entered. This chamber was the size of a small bedroom but it was full to burst with ancient artifacts, including thousands of scrolls. This chamber was the closest thing to a library that existed in this Garden of Eden. Flynn was impressed, while his daughter was too traumatized by her experiences to express a distinct personality. LeVil was proud of his collection and he derived pleasure from knowing that all of the recorded knowledge in the land was in his keeping and that he could render everyone else ignorant of their history and peoples. The surest way to maintain control in the present was through restricting access to knowledge of the past. LeVil’s brand of evil was power and control, but Flynn had loftier aspirations and was interested in total annihilation of the potential for goodness. Flynn needed to know what Adam’s dream of the Fever Snake had revealed about that eternal demon’s will and intentions.
 
LeVil thumbed through baskets filled with scrolls and then finally pulled out a large scroll made from fabric. This scroll was the most ancient that Flynn had seen. LeVil unrolled the scroll and motioned for Flynn to hold one end so that they could look at it together. The scroll was a map although it wasn’t immediately clear to Flynn what it represented. LeVil used one hand to hold up the other side of the scroll and then with his free hand he pointed out an area near the bottom edge of the map. He indicated that this was the location of Fester. He asked Flynn where Flynn had traveled from to arrive at Fester. LeVil then indicated the path of that journey on the map locating Flynn’s home tribe in the process.
 
The total area of cultivated land was considerably smaller than Flynn had presumed. LeVil explained that there was land beyond the boundaries of the map but this territory was recognized as “wastelands” where no beasts roamed and where no food could be grown on the land. LeVil believed that the land extended forever simply becoming harsher and less fertile the greater the distance from the area known to have been cultivated. LeVil also suggested that the homestead of Eve and Seth would most likely be the farthest point away from the edge of the wastelands. As a result, he had pinpointed that area and now marked it on the map for Flynn to see.
 
Flynn couldn’t understand why LeVil hadn’t raided that area himself. LeVil casually explained that his raiders had often ravaged that land but had turned up nothing of consequence. They had found a headstone that was thought to be the grave of Adam, but upon digging up the land, found no remains. Flynn seemed unimpressed but LeVil had no other relevant information for Flynn. Flynn agreed that he would investigate that region and reiterated that if he found the Scroll of Adam then he would return to Fester with the scroll and then pay LeVil the tribute they agreed upon. LeVil was satisfied and led Flynn back upstairs. Flynn was curious about the map and asked LeVil whether he knew anything of its origins. LeVil replied that it was believed to have been Cain’s map. Flynn was impressed by LeVil’s power and influence, but he still made his leave swiftly and was on the road heading away from Fester within the hour.
 
It took Flynn more than a month to arrive at the location LeVil had marked on the map. It was the most traveling Flynn had ever done in his life. He had passed through several tribal villages along the way, each time trading his daughter’s sexual services for food and shelter. He revealed nothing to these strangers about his quest and simply told them that another of his children had escaped him and that he was in pursuit to rectify the transgression. Most of those who encountered Flynn were terrified by his demeanor. The Fever Snake had broken almost everyone’s will and they lived what they considered to be a cursed existence however they correctly recognized Flynn as being different in this regard. In Flynn’s hometown, this had generally been denied or disregarded, and his tribe had had no intention of allowing Flynn to believe that anything about him was special. Flynn once had a dream with the Fever Snake but instead of heeding its advice, he had murdered the snake in his dream and then ignored the prophecy of that demonic apparition thus dodging the curse that had been designed specifically for him.
 
Flynn believed that he was in control of his own destiny. So, when he and his daughter arrived at that legendary homestead in the clearing, he felt that his future was in his hands and that it was just a matter of time before he would uncover the most coveted scroll. There had been many stories about Adam and Eve in the oral tradition, and whatever had been written that was most relevant for Flynn’s investigation would likely be locked away in LeVil’s chamber. The legend as it was shared in the land was considered by most to be factual however Flynn saw inconsistencies which others tended to conveniently ignore. Flynn focused on one of the stories which he thought might help him – the tale of Eve and the Black Beast.
 
It was said that Eve had encountered a black beast just before her dream with the Fever Snake. Supposedly, this had been Eve’s first trip away from the homestead. Based on that information, Flynn reasoned that he might identify the path which Eve would have taken on her first adventure. Surely, it would have been the most beaten path and certainly the most beaten path would have been at the widest break in the trees around the clearing. The cabin, house, and barns had been destroyed over the ages, but the natural context was largely unchanged. The widest break in the trees was at the southern end of the clearing. Flynn yanked at his daughter’s harness and pulled her that way. They entered the brush and Flynn carefully chose a path which he felt an inexperienced explorer might believe was the safest.
 
Flynn marched for several hours backtracking on occasion to reconsider the path he was following based on an assessment of the overgrowth of the brush. It took a few days, but he finally reached the open plain where Eve had laid down for a rest and where the snake had crawled up her body and coiled itself around her throat. Flynn had an intuition about weak mindsets and this instinct is what had helped him to survive in such a cruel, malevolent world. He figured that Eve would not have traversed the plain and instead would have turned back and gone home. He was convinced that this location would have been important to her, and it may have been where she buried Adam, or where she had encountered the Fever Snake. He also conjectured that Eve may have hidden the scroll in this location.
 
He instructed his daughter to help him search around the area and see what they could turn up. After several hours, Flynn was about to give up when he spotted a strange knot in one of the trees along the edge of the plain. He walked over to the tree and smashed at the knot from several angles. He noticed an unnatural looking gap between the knot and the regular bark of the tree. He then thought to pull at the knot. He called his daughter over to help and they were able to pry off the knot which turned out to be a stopper or cover for a cubby hole that had been carved into the tree. Inside the small compartment were three scrolls and sitting on top were some precision tools. Flynn gathered the artifacts and then grabbed his daughter’s head roughly with both hands and shook it vigorously. Flynn was excited and perhaps even happy, but even shows of affection from this cruel man were inherently abusive.
 
Of course his daughter said nothing and asked no questions. Flynn led her back to the clearing of Adam and Eve’s homestead and she knew to quicken her pace to avoid being dragged by her throat. Back at the clearing, Flynn unraveled the ancient scrolls and began reading through what was legible and written in dialect he could understand. One of the scrolls did appear to be the coveted Scroll of Adam, and there had always been confusion about who would have written it. The two other scrolls were records of the lives of Cain and Abel, respectively. They were written by the same hand and based on the rhetoric Flynn concluded that the stories had been authored by Eve. However, the Scroll of Adam was in a different penmanship and Flynn concluded that this had been written by Adam himself.
 
The Scroll of Adam did in fact report on a dream and an encounter with the Fever Snake. It was perhaps the first such encounter as had been prophesized in the land. The Fever Snake had told Adam that the only way to create a female child would be through murdering the male child growing inside Eve. Flynn wondered if this meant the child that was to have been sacrificed was Seth. The Fever Snake had demanded that Adam go into the wildlands and slaughter a black beast. The fang of the beast was to be extracted and then used as a weapon for murdering the developed fetus growing inside Eve. Apparently, Adam had had absolutely no intention of following the Fever Snake’s repugnant plan. Adam attributed the nightmare to his own anxieties at the time, but conceded that it might have been a demon. Adam questioned why God would not have provided a warning about the presence of this sinister demon.
 
As Flynn read through the scroll, he became disgusted. Everything that he had ever read and everything he had ever learned from others had been knowledge imparted by wicked and meager personalities. He had never read the words of a good person and was abhorred that such a thing should have ever existed. Due to his profound disdain he decided to burn the Scroll of Adam so that no one else might ever find it and be influenced by the idea that good had been a viable way to exist. As the scroll burned to ashes, Flynn digested the information and cogitated, devising the next stage of his devious plan.
 
Flynn was disturbed by the experience of knowing goodness. His personal quest had been the opposite and he sought an experience and knowledge of pure evil. Flynn wondered whether finding the Scroll of Adam had been the way that the Fever Snake demon had cursed Flynn and that the demon had thus caught up to Flynn in the end to exact revenge. Flynn pushed away his doubts and trepidations, determined to move forward with his plan. What the Fever Snake had told Adam did seem profoundly wicked, yet it was far more evil to corrupt a good person through coercing such an awful act as the sacrificial abortion than it was to have wretched people do such a nasty thing. Still, Flynn felt that Adam’s memoir was prophetic, and Flynn concluded that he should reproduce the conditions that Adam faced and then follow through with the Fever Snake’s suggestion regarding a ritual sacrifice.
 
Flynn was competent enough to build a hut and weapons, while he had experience as a hunter. He decided that they would stay in the clearing while he attempted to impregnate his daughter. Flynn attempted multiple times a day to accomplish his goal until finally he achieved the intended result. There was never conversation between them and Flynn endeavored to keep his daughter completely ignorant. However, one night several months after she had conceived her father’s child, she ran off into the wildlands to escape him. Flynn woke up at dawn to find that she wasn’t there, and he panicked.
 
His daughter having been ignorant of things didn’t know how to cover her tracks and so it was no great difficulty for Flynn to find the route his daughter had taken. When he finally caught up to her she was pressed against a tree and panting short of breath. He began yelling at her but she refused to turn her head to acknowledge him. She seemed more terrified of what was directly in front of her. Flynn moved in closer but slowed his pace in apprehension of some unknown danger. As he got squared-up at the scene, what he saw was the most savage black beast he had ever laid eyes on, and it was bearing down on his daughter. The beast had its back raised up and its coat of onyx fur was so coarse that it had the sharpness of quills. The beast bared its rows of razor-edged teeth while its massive fangs dripped with frothy saliva.
 
This massive monster of an animal paid no attention to Flynn and was entirely focused on its helpless target. Flynn quickly realized that the beast wasn’t concerned with him, and so he sprang into action. Flynn found a large rock that was loose along the path and he raised it up above his head. He rushed the beast and before the beast knew to address Flynn’s threat, Flynn had smashed the rock down against the back of the beast with full force. The beast crumpled and rolled to the side but quickly pulled its hindquarters out from under it. It was ready to charge at Flynn. They met head-on and Flynn had already pulled out his hunting knives that he always kept in sheaths strapped to his back.
 
The beast was on Flynn’s throat tearing and gashing the flesh, but Flynn used both blades to carve up the animal quickly. The beast began spewing its own blood and then collapsed on top of Flynn. Flynn pushed the black beast off of him and then immediately rushed over to his daughter to back slap her roughly across the side of her face for her defiance. Flynn was in control once more and ironically his daughter’s attempted escape had provided Flynn with one of the essential items that he required for his ritual sacrifice. He considered this an omen and started to feel great satisfaction and relief. He hoisted the black beast’s corpse onto his shoulders and then directed his daughter to start making her way back to the clearing. The march back to the former first homestead was done at a pace considerate of his daughter’s situation because for the first time in his life Flynn felt like realizing his destiny was a guarantee.
 
More time passed and his daughter had decided to accept her situation. She was close to term now and Flynn knew that it was almost time for the sacrifice. He wasn’t sure what would happen after the sacrifice but he felt confident that these were the conditions that would allow him to experience pure bliss through the essence of evil. Flynn had prepared the weapon to be used from the jaws of the slaughtered black beast. The fang was slightly curved and about five inches in length and three inches thick. Flynn had crafted a handle for the fang which made it about as long as his hunting knives. He had also sharpened the fang with some of the precision tools that had been in Eve’s cubby. Finally, Flynn carved the words “kin crèche” into the fang.
 
On the fateful night, Flynn had awoken to the crackle of thunder in the distance. He could see a lightning storm raging far away from the clearing, but it seemed to be moving away from their location. There was an eerie silence in the clearing and for the first time since they had arrived months earlier, Flynn imagined what the place must have looked like at the time that Adam and Eve’s family had been living there. Flynn marched into the hut and grabbed his daughter by the throat and then dragged her outside. He brought her over to a small altar that he had crafted, which was primarily just a series of large flat rocks. He then set the hut aflame. Flynn had the beast’s fang prepared. He forced his daughter onto the flat rocks and he began to ravage her. For all of the horror that his daughter had experienced in life she had never screamed or cried out in pain, but this time she wailed with all her fury and deep sorrow.
 
This terror excited Flynn and did not deter him in the slightest. He dismounted his daughter and took the fang in hand. He proceeded to follow the prophecy of the Scroll of Adam. After dozens of stabbing thrusts, Flynn reached up and inside to yank out his sacrifice with such a vulgarity that his daughter’s despair became his profound joy. It was difficult to hear over his daughter’s screams but as the newborn took its first and last breaths in this Garden of Eden, Flynn heard a little gasp and then a tiny sigh. Flynn considered himself to be victorious. He held the baby’s corpse above his head and cried out a terrifying roar. The baby’s body was carefully placed in the arms of his daughter and as Flynn caringly brushed her hair to the side, he realized that she too had been sacrificed in the monstrous ritual. Flynn wept.
 
The blood from his daughter continued to drip through the cracks between the flat rocks of the makeshift altar and then seeped into the soil of the land. Flynn had no reason to stay in the clearing and he wouldn’t be able to return to Fester given that he had destroyed LeVil’s tribute. Flynn sat in front of the altar and closed his eyes waiting for that moment of pure bliss which he believed he had been promised and which was his destiny. Nothing came of it. He felt no more in touch with the essence of evil than he ever had. In fact, he now felt more alone because his daughter was dead. He even considered for a moment that the whole thing had been a bad idea and a big mistake. Flynn didn’t wait around and he didn’t clean up his mess. He simply left the clearing and wandered back to the last village that he had visited on his trip out there.
 
Meanwhile, that sacrificial blood had been cursed with eldritch magicks through the prophetic ritual. The blood poisoned the land, and within a few weeks absolutely nothing was growing and the soil was completely toxic. The animals had nothing to graze and soon they were unable to reproduce. Predators, like the black beasts, began to starve and so they became more aggressive against mankind and descended as savage packs upon the villages and towns. Mankind did its best to survive through their dedication to cannibalism and general iniquity, but it was just a matter of time before all food supply ran out. Riots ensued and raiding parties like those of Fester were the last survivors of the apocalypse.
 
Flynn had decided to make his way back to Fester hoping that he might usurp LeVil and finish his life as the last living person in the land. It didn’t quite work out that way for him because one of the Fester raiding parties recognized Flynn and their warlord questioned what had happened to Flynn’s daughter given that he knew of LeVil’s arrangement with Flynn. When it was obvious that she was dead, the raiders saw no reason to keep Flynn alive. They feminized him and then eviscerated the cruel man. His guts were dragged from one end of the village to the other.
 
LeVil was the last living person on the land. He forced everyone out of the walled area that was his private bunker, and then he set Fester ablaze. The town was still burning long after all of its inhabitants had perished. The raiding parties eventually turned on each other with but a single warlord returning to LeVil days later to plead for admittance to the bunker. LeVil demanded that the warlord bring females in order to gain entry. However, the warlord hung his head and confessed that all of the females had perished. LeVil pretended to sympathize and did allow the warlord to enter and join him. The moment the warlord dropped his guard, LeVil stabbed him in the back of the throat several times, and then chortled as the warlord dropped to his knees and made his final gasps while bleeding out.
 
LeVil wondered what had happened to Flynn. Was the apocalypse Flynn’s doing and had he found the coveted artifacts during his expedition? It seemed that whatever had happened Flynn was indeed responsible. LeVil recognized that it was a mere matter of time before he too would succumb to the inevitabilities of inhabiting a dead world. But, LeVil supposed that perhaps Flynn had set something in motion, whereby evil would be replaced by good, at least for a time. LeVil wondered whether life was a cycle between the domination of good and evil, and that Flynn’s actions had brought evil to an end but that perhaps one day the actions of a truly good person would bring good to an end as well, thus rebirthing evil. LeVil’s final moments were enjoyed on his throne imagining how he might be resurrected and then granted a fresh start for his tyrannical rule.

NEXT: MILK & HONEY NOTES