Satan's Story by Chris Matheson Page B

create a reality where there were only males, which he so obviously preferred? I’m not totally sure, but my belief is that God had a powerful “feminine” side that needed to be expressed. He was terribly uncomfortable with it—scared of being homosexual, I suppose, though why that scared him I still don’t know. But the way the Old Man treated Eve was unkind. The poor creature had just been yanked into existence, fully formed, an adult, given no time to grow up, and was now facing her creator—who seemed to
dislike
her. How can I help her, I instantly wondered?
    The Old Man had placed a tree he called the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” (he was pretentious that way) in the middle of the garden the humans lived in. He told the man, Adam, that if he ate of this tree, he’d instantly die. I was pretty sure that was bullshit, that the point of this tree wasn’t “knowledge,” the point was “
obedience
.” And I told the woman so.
    The Old Man’s reaction to the humans’ eating the fruit was fascinating. He turned white with rage and literally stomped down from heaven and around the garden, yelling at the humans, “Where are you?” (He loved to claim that he “knew everything,” but stuff like this kind of gave him away.) The man and the woman, poor things, were resting in each other’s arms when the Old Manfound them. He stood there, hands on his hips, a hard, cold gleam in his eye. But underneath his anger I saw something else: a tiny little smile. The Old Man was happy about the way this had gone. He
liked
being mad at the humans, I suddenly understood; he
wanted
to blame and punish them. “You will WORK!” he shouted at Adam, and I wanted to point out, “He’s
already
been working, it’s a meaningless threat!” But I didn’t. “You will suffer giving birth,” he snarled at the woman. “Another meaningless threat,” I wanted to say. “You were already going to have a hard time giving birth, Eve, for purely physiological reasons!”
    But before I could speak, the Old Man turned on me. It was the first time he’d ever looked directly at me and it was.. strange. He looked imperious, utterly superior—but there was also a palpable undercurrent of insecurity in his eyes. “As for
you
, serpent,” he said. “
You
will crawl on the ground!” I almost laughed. “Serpents
already
crawl on the ground,” I thought to myself. The Old Man followed that up with, “I will also make sure that women hate snakes!” which was laughable too, because I was
possessing
a snake, I wasn’t
actually
a snake. Why was he threatening all snakes? It would have made sense for him to say something like, “Henceforth, all humans will despise you, Satan!” But to issue empty threats to snake-kind? Weak.
    As Adam and Eve exited the garden, the Old Man looked at me again and spoke, this time in a lower, quieter voice—less for effect. “Now that he’s become like one of us,” he said, nodding to Adam, “what if he should eat from the tree of life and live forever?” I stared back at him and thought to myself: “What the hell are you even
talking
about, Old Man? There is no tree of life. Why
would
there be? Who would it be
for
?” But here’s the thing with the Old Man: once he said something, he would never, and I mean never, back down. He’d keep digging his feet in deeper and deeper to prove his original point.
    In order to prove that there really
was
a tree of life to protect, the Old Man now created what appeared to be flying man-servants. They were muscular guys with wings dressed in shortwhite robes, all of them quite handsome and athletic. The Old Man gave them swords and told them to chop off Adam’s head if he tried to sneak back into the garden.

THREE
    With regard to that first family of human beings, I’ve often