Eve awoke to find her body wrapped in a crumpled mess around Adam’s. She did not know how long she had been unconscious, but night had fallen around her, so that the world was filled with the cries and chirps of owls and crickets. Pain had not been in her vocabulary since that moment, when it hit her harder than any other emotion had previously done before. Sitting up, she surveyed her surroundings, but was unable to look very far. Encircled by a pack of wolves, all she saw was the glint of mad, brown eyes. They pawed at the ground.
But not in an intimidating way, thought Eve. Sobbing, she stood, wrapping her arms around the nearest wolf. Except the flesh of her hands were no longer pale and soft, but now a mat of dark fur, ruffled by the twigs she had lay among. Raising her head, she howled, her tears becoming lost in the permanent coat which surrounded her body.
‘What has happened!?’ She yelled to the moon. But the sound she created was inhuman; animalistic. Raising a paw to shake Adam awake, she saw for the first time what he had become. Just like her, his features had become like that of a wild beast; destined to never set foot in the Garden of Eden again.
‘It’s no use.’ A voice articulated nearby. Turning, Eve’s eyes locked together with the wolf she had attempted to embrace. ‘You have been abandoned and there’s no way to return.’ Her retinas scanned the pack of wolves around her, realising only then that they were all male-female pairs, just like herself and Adam. Except the wolf who had spoken directly to her. The cogs of her brain ticked slower than usual, as if she had derived her intellect and power from the Garden of Eden itself.
‘S-so… He’s using us like test subjects; like guinea-pigs?’ She muttered dully.
‘We were merely the spares He created for His ultimate invention: the perfect person. Trial runs, one might say.’
‘So my life has been a lie all this time? And what exactly constitutes a ‘perfect person?’’ Eve’s jaws spat the alliteration of the last four syllables, bitter thoughts too much to bear.
‘Nobody knows apart from Him, it seems. But I wish He’d create a perfect God to usurp His immoral existence.’
‘Is there anything we can do? I must destroy Him.’
‘We have tried, and failed. He created us; He knows us better than we know ourselves. I often wonder whether He has already drawn out our lives in the stars, and we are merely the poor, ill-conceived beggars who must live out this Hellish nightmare. Already – as we speak – He is making more Adams and Eves, chiseling away at those awful characteristics of yours which made you reach for that Godforsaken apple. No. There is nothing we can do but learn to survive. Welcome to the Fortress of Nede; the abandoned warehouse of dreams. The Garden of Eden may have been the location with the invisible gates, but we’re the creatures who are trapped. The gates are used predominately to keep us out, not them in.’ He spat ‘us’ and ‘them,’ as though the fact that they did not share any commonplace letters expressed more clearly the empty void which lay between them; the ongoing feud.
‘Then I’ll rip Him to pieces!’ Eve roared, glaring defiantly at the moon as if it was in some way connected to God. ‘I’ll tear that light from His flesh so that He becomes dark and angry, as He did to us.’
Springing up from where she sat, Eve attempted to rush off and explore her surroundings. Alas, she had not yet grown accustomed to using four legs instead of two and immediately stumbled, falling into a thorny shrub dotted with red berries. As if in reply, the clouds parted suddenly to make way for a quick flash of lightning. It lit the land like a crooked smile, two stars acting as delighted, glittering eyes. Eve pawed the ground, head lowered and brow furrowed. She knew instinctively that it an action from God and that He was watching them with the intensity of a spy watching his enemy. Turning so quickly towards the pack of watching wolves that her head gave a dizzying jolt, she raised her eyes, her mouth set in a straight, solemn line.
‘I have heard the legend of one deadly, evil being which may be able to bring redemption to us all. God Himself gave me this information, so it may be a wildly constructed ploy of His… but we have no other option…’ The faces which met Eve’s gaze were each cocked at a thirty five degree angle, puzzled but hungry to hear more.
‘I am speaking of the Great Satan Himself.’ Eve pronounced the words slowly, mulling over every intonation with both the grief and awe of a confused yet desperate wife.
The clouds parted once more and rain splashed onto the wolves’ coats, the smell of damp fur rising to meet their sensitive noses.
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