Adam and Eve as the First Horror Story

By Levi Abadilla

You are the first creature to ever be made from flesh.

In the beginning was the word and it was the word that brought forth the light, the earth, and all who roamed it. Even the Man, formed in the image of God as he may be, was from the earth, and so by extension is a product of that which was commanded into existence by the word.

But not you. You are taken from the Man’s own body, his excavated rib bent and stretched and melted into that which will cure his solitude. Loneliness is the first thing God declared not Good, and you are crafted to ward against it. Creation’s first balm to its growing pains.

The Man is given one commandment. You are given two. The first: do not eat from the Tree of Knowledge; the second binds itself into your copied bones when you are given a name: Eve – to give life.

Eve, you are called. Eve, you are branded. The first to be born of another living being, destined to birth all who will come after you.

Eve, you turn the name over and over in your head as the Man watches you like he’s never seen something like you before (and he hasn’t, so you don’t blame him). You were blessed enough to be named, to be given a designation, to be given purpose.

The Man takes your hand and leads you to a stream. You link your fingers with his and wonder: if you were made from his flesh, then is his body an extension of yours?

#

The Garden extends as far as you can will yourself to walk, stretching on and on and on in whichever direction you pick. An endless hallway of perfect harmony, a perpetual state of existential tunnel vision. There is fruit for you to eat should you wish it. There is water for you to drink should you thirst. There are the creatures of the earth for you to seek company in, because you were made to cure the loneliness of Man, but nothing was created to cure yours.

The snake looks at you the way the Man does, like it doesn’t quite know what to do with you. Adam was lonely, yes, but he didn’t ask for you, specifically, with everything that entails you. You must soothe the emptiness of his heart, and he must be content in your existence. A one-size-that-has-to-fit solution, because there’s no one else; there’s only you to appease him, and your role doesn’t give him a lot of options.

That same conflicted glint is in the snake’s eyes as it hangs from the tree. It looks like it doesn’t quite know whether to talk to you or leave you alone. It stares at you until you either leave or fall asleep wherever you’ve lain down. It follows you when you leave. It goes away when you fall asleep. 

You could talk to it, you suppose, because there’s no one else to talk to outside of your husband and this Garden is too huge for both of you to always be together. But you don’t know if talking to a snake is something you would do. Your role is Mother. You don’t know anything else outside of that.

The celestial bodies give light in the daytime and nighttime. A dome of distance separates the waters of the earth and the waters of the sky. The greenery around you provides shelter and food for yourself and the animals around you. Creation is a dialogue of roles; each one answers back to the other—save perhaps Man.

God commands Man to steward the Garden, and Man obeys God and only God. Adam speaks to the world around him and creation—you included—bows its head. It submits to him, obeys him; that’s how the script goes.

In a sense, you suppose you have more in common with the Garden than you do your husband-progenitor, but that’s not quite true either. You can never forget that you were born of blood and bone.

As you lie down beneath the shade of a large tree, the snake watches you, again with that look in its eyes. So, you ask:

“Why are you staring at me like that?”

—Like what?

“Like that.” You lift a hand and point between its eyes. Your nails are flat and dull, nothing like the claws you’ve seen on the birds and the large beasts that roam the Garden. “That look I don’t know.”

—Ah. That would be pity.

Your lips turn down. “What’s that?”

—Nothing Good, so you wouldn’t know it. This Garden is a place of happiness, and pity has no room in it. You wouldn’t have seen it before.

“Is it like loneliness?”

The snake pauses, reptilian head cocking to the side. 

“It’s why I was made,” you say. “It was something that didn’t belong in the Garden, so I was created from Man’s rib to fix it.”

The snake carefully lowers its front claws to the branch below it, climbing down. 

—Man was made in the image of God. And you, in the image of Man.

“I suppose,” you say. “Do you know why?”

—Now why would you ask me that?

“You seem to know things,” you say. “Like what the Garden has room for and what it doesn’t. Like pity.”

The snake studies you for a moment.

—You’re a curious one, aren’t you?

“What’s that?”

—What one is when they are hungry for answers. What one is when they ask questions.

“Is that a Good thing?”

The snake flicks its tongue out. 

—It depends on who you ask.

“Well, I’m asking you.”

You think the snake smiles. It’s impossible to tell, because you haven’t seen too many smiles around here. The Man does it sometimes, when something amuses him, but you don’t know if that expression is exclusive to him.

—I think it is. It’s what comes after that’s up for debate.

“What comes after?” you ask, and the snake’s smile widens. 

—Truth.

“And what’s wrong with that?”

Its head dips, and right now, you don’t find the word for what the gesture feels like, but perhaps you will later, when Knowledge sinks into your tastebuds. On the branch, the snake hangs (like a noose), and says:

—You may not like what you find.

#

The Man names the world around him, because it is his role to do so. Or he has the authority to do so, you amend, though you don’t know if inheriting the earth is as much of a brand on him as your name is on you. At the very least, you can spend your time asking him why this and that is named so and so, and he does his best to answer you even when he hasn’t been given any guidance.

You wonder if you look at him with pity too, sometimes. Outside of your bones, you are united by the fact that neither of you quite know what to do with yourselves. There are no instructions to existence, no cheat sheets, or to-do lists, or step-by-step breakdowns. Here you are, brought into awareness, and promptly told don’t fuck it up.

“Why do you name them?” you ask, one day, while you’re sitting in a meadow. He has a bear cub sleeping in his lap, the mother lazily sprawled out a few feet behind him.

Man raises his head. “What?”

“Authority isn’t synonymous with role, is it? You can but you don’t have to. Why do you name them?”

The mirth on his face completely wipes itself away, and there it is again, that pity in his eyes. He looks back down at the animal sleeping on him, gaze blank. You don’t have a word for this either, but you recognize the look. You’ve caught sight of your reflection in a pond once, on a particularly sunny day. Blank-eyed, hollow-gazed; skin the same shade as Adam’s, bones the same shape as Adam’s; irises the same color as Adam’s. And why wouldn’t they be, with your parthenogenetic existence?

“It’s what I do,” he says. “It’s what I know.”

“Oh.”

Maybe you’re not so different, even when you are Mother and he is Inheritor—but again, why wouldn’t you be, when you’re one being split into two? In a way, he too is Mother, his flesh giving way to you. And perhaps you too are Inheritor, being of that same flesh that has received the earth.

—Is that what you think?

The snake later asks, when it finds you beneath the shade of a tree again.

“Isn’t that the case?” you shoot back.

It hums, once again crawling down the branch it’s perched on to get closer to you, so it doesn’t have to raise its voice too much.

—I suppose I can see your point. Creation is an endless chain of mirrors, all repeating images back to each other.

It flicks its tongue out.

—Though, truthfully, I find you more similar to an angel than to your husband.

“What’s that?”

—The ones that came before you. They dwell in the Heavens, carrying out the Father’s will, and singing praises to him day and night, because it is what they are made to do. Creatures of role and function.

The snake smiles again.

—It is why the Father made you, after all. An experiment of freedom; it is what sets you apart from what he’s already made before.

You let the thought sit in your mind, understanding grasping onto it and pulling it apart. You wonder if you would see your face reflected back at you if you were ever to look at an angel. You wonder if they have the same blank eyes, the same soft flesh, the same heart that beats in your chest. They must, if you are so similar.

Or perhaps you’re a mockery of them, all the same parts and features but with the absence of purpose. Maybe humanity is a parody of divinity. Maybe you’re a stretched-out shadow standing behind them, limbs wrongly elongated, features recognizable but undeniably wrong.

You wonder if you would understand things better had you been made an angel instead of a human.

The snake laughs when you say as much.

—Oh, they don’t like curiosity there.

“Well, if I’m an angel, I wouldn’t be curious, would I? I would know what to do.”

The snake’s mouth snaps shut, smile tightening. For a moment, you think it’s going to unhinge its jaw and devour you whole—and then you wonder why you would think that. Why would it do that?

—The only thing that sets humanity and divinity apart is freedom.

And then the snake crawls away, leaving you to digest its parting statement. Your skin feels stretched, too small to contain the implication of what you’ve just been told. You think about the tree you must never eat from and wonder why it’s there in the first place.

#

“Have you ever seen the Tree?” you ask the Man. It’s a sunny day and you’re both sitting by a pond. It reflects your face back at you, your duplicates staring out from the water with the same blank eyes. Four aimless simulacrums of God.

“No,” the Man says. “We’re not supposed to look for it.”

“But have you seen it?”

From the corner of your eye, the Man frowns, his gaze sliding to you in disapproval. You keep yours on your rippling form in the pond.

“If we’re not allowed to eat the fruit, then why put it here with us in the first place?” you ask. “If we’re not allowed to eat the fruit, why was it even created?”

A fish breaches the water for a moment, and your form distorts, your side melting into a blur of colors, interrupted by patches of blue. Your face stretches, warps, your mouth opening into a black hole that blots out all recognizable features. 

“Well, it’s not here with us,” the Man says. “I’ve never seen it.”

“Then why taunt us with the knowledge that it exists?” you ask. “What would we gain from that? What’s the point? Does knowing it’s out there do anything for us? Is it a test, and if so, why are we being tested? What for? What good does that do? What is there for us to prove? What is there to be gained from all of this?”

“Why do you even want to know?” The Man’s tone is tight, and he’s not looking at you anymore. Instead, he’s similarly brought his gaze to his misshapen reflection.

“Don’t you?” You turn to him this time, at his clenched jaw, his knit brows, his drawn shoulders. “I was created with a reason. You weren’t.”

He flinches. You didn’t even know the word for it until he does it, but you think it fits—a sudden jolt of his body, like lightning striking down; the sound is quick in your mouth, smooth at its beginning, explosive between the hard palette of your mouth, your tongue, and your teeth at the end. Fli-n-ch.

He’s quiet when he speaks next. “Do you think I don’t know that?” he asks. “Do you think I don’t wonder why I was created alone, with only the knowledge that I was to exist in this Garden and have it? With companionship as an afterthought? My purpose nonexistent outside of being created in the image of Him?”

His fingers curl, fists clenching, nails digging into his palms. You wonder what will happen if he digs them in hard enough. You wonder if the skin will peel like bark when the snake digs its claws into a tree, if the flesh will shred like wood chips. You have never seen an animal be hunted down. 

You watch him draw in a breath and uncurl his fists. “Why don’t you ever ask, then?”

“There’s no one to ask,” he says. “You wouldn’t know the answer either.”

“We could have at least talked.”

He gets up and leaves, and you’re left alone with your malformed image in the pond.

What a silly thought to have, anyway. Of course Adam doesn’t know, you’re two halves of the same whole.

#

“I don’t think Adam likes me.” 

Above you, on the lowest branch of your usual tree, the snake chuckles.

—I don’t think you like him either.

“But I don’t dislike him. He’s just there,” you say. “Like the sky and the sun and the river. I don’t feel anything about them.”

—Really? No sense of wonder, no awe, no curiosity?

“Well, I want to know why the river runs and why the sun gives us heat. I want to know why it rains and why there’s water on plants in the morning. I want to know why the fruits bloom. I want to know why the ocean is salty. I want to know why the sunset tints the sky orange. I want to know why the moon changes shape.”

You inhale sharply, out of breath from your little monologue. The snake laughs.

“I want to know a lot of things,” you say. “Most importantly, what to do with myself. But there’s no one around who can answer these questions, is there?”

The snake turns, crawling for the trunk, and digging its claws into the bark as it scales down the tree. Once it’s close enough to the ground, it hops down next to you, long tail coiling in close. 

—There is.

You turn to it, slowly. It’s not looking at you, instead staring up at the overcast sky above like it holds all the answers. For all you know, it probably does. 

—It’s not called the Tree of Knowledge for nothing, you know. All that you need to begin is there; the things that you are supposed to know and the things you need to delve deeper into the secrets of creation. It’s all there.

“Why—” You cough. Your throat is dry, your mouth tastes like sandpaper. “Why does that Tree exist, and why is it so close that we have to be warned against it?”

—I don’t know. Why seek a perfect creation and then make it flawed? Why create beings with no free will and then another with choice? Why test that capacity for choice when using it seems to be the wrong answer? Is it the wrong answer? If not, then why set it up like it is in the first place?

The snake sighs. Overhead, something flashes inside a thick, gray storm cloud, a boom of thunder following soon after. A cold breeze rustles the branches above you.

—There are some things I know but plenty more that I don’t.

You nod, though lying flat on your back, the action is stiff and stilted.

—Perhaps you won’t have to worry too much about that, though. I think that test is for the Man, anyway.

“I’m closer to an angel than a human.”

—Yes.

You nod again. “How do you even know what angels are like?”

Another flash of lightning sparks in the distance. In the corner of your eye, the light seems to halo the snake’s bowed, mournful head. 

—I used to be one.

“Oh,” you say. Of course. Nothing here in the Garden could go up to the Heavens, it makes sense that the only thing that knows what it’s like used to be an angel itself. “So why are you here now?”

—I wanted more than what was given to me—and as I’ve said, they don’t like curiosity there.

“Oh,” you say again. “What were you curious about?”

—Why we should worship Man.

“… and what answer did you get?”

—I didn’t get any.

You sit up, bringing your knees to your chest and hugging them close. “Is that why you started talking to me? Because I reminded you of… what you used to be?”

The snake’s laugh is dry and humorless this time. 

—In a way, yes. Born with a yoke around her neck that she can’t escape from, curious, always poking around for answers, made to dog after the heels of a divine image. Made to love a divine image, even.

“I don’t love Adam,” you admit. Adam is Adam, simply there; he is your husband, and you are his wife, and he’s the only other human in this place, but proximity and lack of options don’t make it love. It’s simply proximity and a lack of options. He’s amiable, he’s kind, but your marriage is as much of a fact as how the sky is blue.

—Oh, but you have to. You belong together, you see. You’re two halves of the same soul.

The snake finally turns to face you this time, and there it is again, that pity in its eyes.

—You don’t have a choice, Eve. He wasn’t made for you, but you were made for him.

#

“Do you love me?”

Adam’s expression twists: forehead creasing, lips pursing, eyes crinkling. The moon has changed and hidden its face, so it’s a dark night, and you probably wouldn’t have seen his expression if you weren’t right next to each other. You’re lying on your side, he’s lying on his back, staring up at the clear sky.

“What?” he asks.

“Do you love me,” you repeat flatly. You don’t know what answer you’re expecting, but you hope he’s at least honest.

The frown stays on his face as he mulls over your words. Then, “I don’t know.”

A non-answer. That’s a shame, but you hum in acknowledgment; if anyone understands Adam’s confusion right now, it’s you. He didn’t ask for you to be made as much as you didn’t ask to be created. He was lonely, but he didn’t carve you into existence.

“If I wasn’t created, what would you have done?” you ask.

“The same things I would have, just without you there,” he says.

“You would have been on your own.”

“Yeah,” he says. “But just because I’m not now doesn’t mean it’s love.”

That’s true. You don’t mind it when Adam talks to you about names or his walks or the beasts he spends his time with. You find his company as pleasant as you do the snake’s. But it’s not love, not the kind that you two are supposed to feel for each other.

“What would you be doing if someone else had been created?” you ask.

“The same things I’m doing now, just with that other person.”

You hum. You expected that.

“If you didn’t have to,” you start, “If we could both just walk away from each other, would you?”

Adam goes quiet. He sits up. “… Why are you asking me this?”

You don’t meet his eyes. He is one half of you, but you don’t know if he could ever understand you, understand the way it feels to awaken to a world knowing you are only here to serve a function, to be a scratched and fogged-up mirror of sanctity. From your very first breath, your importance was tied to Companion, Wife, Mother. You are one half of Adam, but you have never held the same place in this Garden as him, no matter how you spin it in your head. You have always been Eve.

But why shouldn’t you? Why shouldn’t you stand on the same ground as your husband? Aren’t you human too? Do you not deserve his authority, his inheritance, the holiness he reflects? Why should you be relegated to a shoulder to cry on, a comfort to lie next to, a body to fuck? Why should you have to soothe and please and spread your legs because it’s your duty? Why should you let your womb bloat and burst because you were told to?

—Eve?

You blink. You don’t know when you’d gotten up and started walking, but you’re standing in a forest, one foot caught on a large, gnarled root of a tree, about to trip, if not for the snake’s tail coiled around your arm. It pulls you back onto your feet, steadying you. 

—It is long past time for humans to sleep, isn’t it?

You hear its claws thudding onto branches, scratching onto tree trunks, before it perches itself on a branch near you and lowers its head, tongue flicking out, golden eyes roaming.

—You’ve been crying.

“What?”

Your eyes are hot and your cheeks are wet, you realize that just now. In your panic, you furiously wipe your face. What is going on?

—That. What you’re doing is crying. Those are tears. It happens when one is overwhelmed, usually by sadness.

“Do angels cry?”

The snake dips its head. 

—Let’s get you somewhere you can’t trip on roots anymore, how about that? It’s a cold night.

“How did you escape?” you ask instead – you don’t even register you’ve asked it until the words tumble out of your mouth, as uncontrollable as your tears. Your chest feels tight, your nose feels clogged, your breaths are coming in fast and short and it hurts. 

—Pardon, dear?

“How did you escape? Being an angel?” You clutch your chest as you feel it constrict. You can’t breathe. It hurts. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. “I don’t – I don’t want to be like an angel. I don’t want this anymore. I don’t want to be Eve.”

Your knees buckle and hit the earth, blinding you with a sharp sting you can’t quite put a word to and earning a cry from you. Tears spring from your eyes again, and you clutch your sore knees, only for your fingers to come away red.

What is that? What on earth is that?

—That is blood.

The snake has descended from the branch and is slowly crawling to you. It motions its snout to your bleeding skin.

—And what you felt before was pain.

“Is—” You swallow. “Is that bad?”

—It will heal. I think you may even be healed by the morning, if an angel is sent to help you. But even without that, your wounds will scab and eventually scar. You’ll live. You’ll be fine, Eve.

The reminder of your name tastes foul in the back of your throat. Somehow it hurts worse than the new sensation of pain.

“How did you escape being an angel?” you repeat.

The snake lifts its head up at you. 

One moment, it is there, and the next, it isn’t. Instead, you sit in a field of unending snow, something bright shining high above you, a gentle choral murmur buzzing in your ears. Your vision blurs as something heavy sits in the space between your eyes. Your head hurts.

And then the snow is gone, leaving you with your headache and a cool hand on your temple soothing your heated skin. Your eyelids droop, and before your lashes hit your cheek, information slots into your brain with a satisfying click.

The Morning Star, the Bringer of Dawn, the Shining One, looks down at you with the face your brain has given it in an effort to comprehend the vast cold and brightness of the angel’s true form. It looms above you, a beacon in a dark moonless night. Icy fingers chase away your headache, then the wounds of your scraped knees, before they link together with your bloodied hands.

—It is not an easy task, to escape a role.

“But it’s possible,” you say. “How?”

—It will hurt.

“How?”

—Darling, look at me.

Scarred palms cup your cheeks, gently angling your head to look at the angel properly. You can feel every angry, jagged mark on your skin, the raised lines and sharp bumps you can’t fathom the origin of. The rest of the angel’s form is in the same state, at least to your limited vision, all misshapen flesh and miscolored patches. On its back are large wings, though you can’t quite make out how many pairs there are with how the sparse feathers are bloodied and charred, some of the bones seemingly melted and fused. You wonder if that’s why the Morning Star knows of blood, of pain, of hurt.

—You will have to lose everything you have now. You will not be favored by the divine. You will not have the fairness you seek. You will know mortality, you will know suffering, you will know finiteness. You will know War and Conquest and Famine and Death. You will know sorrow. You will know Hell.

“But I will not be bound,” you say.

—You will die.

“And freed from the curse of my creation.”

—Oh, Eve.

The angel leans down, pressing its forehead to yours. You think it is mourning.

—You will lose your purpose.

You close your eyes. “I don’t want it.”

Hands slip from your cheek as the angel pulls away. You watch as it reaches to the side to pick up a sharp rock. Slowly, carefully, it takes one of your hands, turning your bloody palm up before placing the rock in your grasp and curling your fingers around it. As the dirt touches your skin, something else clicks into place.

—Then, you have to Fall.

#

It is not murder to return the rain to the rivers it came from, and so you are innocent as you plunge the rock into Adam’s chest and crack his ribs open. You are made of his flesh, one being and one soul split into two bodies and made strangers, and so all you are doing is returning things to where they belong. You are making your choice in the grand experiment of existence, and you choose wholeness, you choose knowledge, you choose evolution.

Perhaps you are choosing mercy too. You don’t love Adam, but you don’t hate him either. How could you when he looks at you with eyes the same shape, the same color, the same buried fear as yours? When the carved fingerprints of his shaking hands are a carbon copy of your own? Two halves of the same whole, his body merely an extension of yours and your body an extension of his, both of you separating to stave off isolation. Perhaps this is your way of saving yourself from loneliness.

Adam’s ribs are missing one, and they collapse easily under the violence of your choice. Something that wouldn’t have happened had you stayed as bone inside his body, but there’s nothing that can be done now. Hell, maybe this is part of the test—maybe his ribs weren’t restored to see if you would try to crawl your way back home, or if he would unite you back into him. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

The Fruit is still beating when you sink your teeth into it, bleeding truth and freedom down your throat. You grind the meat down between your molars, rip shreds off to chew with your incisors, and drink from torn arteries and capillaries. Every bite tastes like iron, sitting heavy in your stomach as you devour Adam’s heart piece by piece by piece. His flesh is food indeed, and his blood is drink indeed, and as you’ve eaten his flesh and drank his blood, he dwells in you and you in him.

And then it’s over. The Garden quiets, as if holding its breath, or as if the music in the theater has stopped. The blood on the gray grass looks black on this lightless night, seeping into the earth and welcoming Death. Something creaks, like gates opening.

On a moonless night, Adam-and-Eve leave the Garden of Eden.

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Levi Abadilla is a queer Filipino author who grew up in the Cebu province, and who enjoys all things weird and uncanny. Their work has been featured in Black Fox Literary, Hominum Journal, and Last Syllable. More of their work can be found on leviabadilla.wordpress.com.  When not writing, they can be found hanging out with their pets on Instagram (@escapedscp), TikTok (@escapedscp), and X (@nineaetharia).

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