by Jo Saleska

 

Adam and Eve sit on a grassy knoll watching the sun melt into the horizon. Many suns have melted since Eve first appeared in the garden, her flesh warm and soft. To Adam’s dismay, Eve is not much of a talker. She prefers to walk the garden alone, stare into the delicate folds of flower petals, press her fingertips into the soft earth. Sometimes she lays her head against the furry creatures’ soft backs and bellies. But when Adam reaches for her—strokes her cheek or grasps her hand or pulls her body against his—she stiffens like stone. So Adam is both surprised and pleased when she agrees to sit beside him to watch the melting sun.    

Adam gazes at Eve while Eve gazes at the horizon, watching it shift from deep pink to plum purple-gray. I want to bring you an object, says Adam. A gift. Please—any object you would like.

Eve ponders for a moment. A flock of winged creatures erupt from a nearby tree and cut across sky. After a while she says softly, almost to herself, I’d like the moon.

The moon?  says Adam.

Eve nods.

Adam cannot help but laugh. He laughs and laughs. He laughs until his ribs ache. He has never in his whole existence heard anything so funny. You cannot have the moon! Do you know nothing of this place, woman? Eve does not laugh. Adam can feel her body turn stony beside his. Then she stands and walks off.

Wait! says Adam after her, but she disappears into the twilight haze. Adam sits on the grassy knoll thinking of Eve and the stars in her eyes. He prays she will come back and lay beside him. Eventually, darkness rolls over the garden and he falls asleep.

Sometime later, Adam jolts awake. Figures had been walking around inside his sleep again. Dreams, he calls them. He tries to hold the phantom shapes in his mind, but they flee and turn to dust. Adam sits up, disoriented. He is still on the grassy knoll, but the sky is now cloaked in darkness, and his only companions are the silvery silhouettes of the garden’s great trees.

Adam shivers.

He cannot remember what or where he is. How did I get here? He wonders. Who am I? What is this place? His heart thrums and heat claws at his throat—there before him a ceaseless pit of eternity, and there behind him a gaping nothingness. Hot liquid pours from his mouth into the grass.

Then he notices the moon. It hangs low in the night sky, swollen-orange like ripe fruit. It’s the most beautiful moon Adam has ever seen. He longs to pluck it from the sky and feel its colossal weight in his hand, to fill the gnawing void in his belly with its mighty glow.

He reaches one hand out toward the moon, just to see—but, of course, he is much too far away to touch the moon. He laughs at himself. How stupid, he thinks. How weak-minded. We cannot touch the moon from all the way down here. As Adam sits there thinking of what to do next, he hears rustling in a nearby tree. Up in the branches, a creature is climbing high and fast.

Adam realizes the creature is Eve.

He calls to her, but she says nothing. She climbs and climbs while Adam watches. She slips and almost falls. Adam begs her to come down.

I love you! he shouts.

But Eve keeps climbing. When she reaches the top, she loops one arm around a branch and stretches the other arm toward the moon. She stretches and stretches and stretches. When her hand finds the moon she holds tight and plucks it from the sky. Adam hears her whoop with delight. She has done it.

Adam watches from the ground as Eve holds the moon to her lips, a celestial fruit, and takes a bite. The moon drips from her lips and down the front of her body. She takes another bite. And another. She eats the entire moon, licking the last bits of it from her fingers. Adam watches Eve’s flesh turn gold, and her body floats into the sky to join the stars.

Adam crawls around the base of the tree, searches desperately for any spare bits of the moon—a crumb, a drop of golden juice. But Eve has left nothing behind.

 

Jo Saleska is a writer and editor based in St. Louis, Missouri. Her fiction has been published in Peatsmoke, Fauxmoir, and a speculative anthology from Alternating Current Press. She has an MA in literature from the University of Missouri, Columbia and recently completed her MFA at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, where she was awarded the Mary Troy Prize for Fiction. She is currently working on a collection of fabulist short stories. You can read more of her writing at josaleska.com.