Genesis

by Jack Geurts

  Lamech’s more like, “What the fuck?”, but Tubal-Cain starts panicking, crying, so his dad slaps him hard across the face and tells him to get his shit together.

  They proceed to dig a nice, big hole and dump the old guy’s body in there. Cover him up with soil and vow to never breathe a word of what happened here. People will think he just fucked off and be glad of it.

  Their animals even more so.

  One poor goat in particular – still having nightmares about it.

  Up top, God’s watching all this and can’t help but be like, “That’s what you get, you fucker. Kill your brother and force me to eat the evidence. That’s what you fucking get.”

  Mind you, he’s hammered when he says this, so he’s a little harsher than he might be otherwise.

  He calls Enoch over to watch, but the guy’s in a hot tub being ridden like a racehorse so God says, “Don’t worry, I’ll tell you later,” and he gets himself another drink.

  Down below, Lamech’s walking back to camp with his son and they’re getting their stories straight. They were out hunting and came back empty-handed – that’s all that happened. People would give them shit, but so what? Better they think that than that they killed Cain the Cunt.

  Cain the Cunt was, after all, rumoured to have a secret pact with God that anyone who caused him harm would have that harm repaid to them with compound interest.

  And they didn’t just cause him harm – they fucking killed the guy.

  So the whole way back, they’re looking around, scared, like they’re in a Final Destination movie. At some point, it settles in that they’re going to spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders and there’s only one appropriate response to that level of paranoia.

  Booze.

  And a fuck-load of it.

  That night, they guzzle the shit like it’s going out of fashion. Tubal-Cain gets real quiet when he drinks, so he’s there writing poems while his dad gets into an argument with another guy, who’s giving him shit for coming back empty-handed.

  Lamech’s pretty wasted by this point, so in a last-ditch effort to save his masculinity, he ends up bragging that he killed a guy – shot him right through the eye from a hundred yards off. Tubal-Cain tries to shut him up, but it doesn’t do any good.

  Not long after that, he carries his dad home and leaves him in the care of his wives, Adah and Zillah.

  That’s right. Wives. Plural.

  Say hello to the first polygamist in history. The Bill Paxton of our story, if you will.

  Anyway, he’s drunk enough that he thinks he can satisfy all three of them, but ends up only satisfying one. I’ll let you guess which.

  After he passes out, Adah pushes him off Zillah and helps the poor woman up. Starting out, they couldn’t stand each other, but being forced to take turns servicing the old man – and occasionally partnering up to do the same – has left them the very best of friends.

  They sit there, mending clothes by the fire, wondering if they could get away with killing their husband in his sleep. Turns out they don’t have to.

  God comes down and lays it out, like, “In case you don’t know, that piece of shit you call a husband just killed Cain.”

  Both of them are shocked, thinking he’s going to take it out on them. But that’s not what he’s got in mind.

  He says, “I told Cain that no one would hurt him. Anyone who did would get hurt seven times worse. Why seven? I don’t know – seemed like a good solid number at the time. Anyway, Fuckface over there shot him in the head with an arrow, so now we gotta figure out what’s seven times worse than that.”

  So God, Adah and Zillah put their heads together and come up with an elegant solution.

  Lamech’s dead drunk, so he doesn’t stir when they move him, but he’s a heavy motherfucker. Carrying him outside, God’s under one arm, Zillah’s under the other and Adah gets the bow ready.

  God’s starting to feel sorry for the women who were constantly flattened under this guy. Adah and Zillah are like, “No shit, why didn’t you do anything about it?”

  He goes, “What do you call this?”

  They tie Lamech to a tree out in the woods and God says they can hit him seven times, but that’s it.

  Adah goes first. Hits him in the arm. Guy doesn’t even wake up.

  “Give it here,” Zillah says, and puts one square through his nutsack.

  That wakes him up.

  Lamech tries to scream, but they’d jammed a bunch of cloth in his mouth so it comes out all muffled.

  God’s off to the side smoking a cigarette and when Lamech looks over at him, eyes bulging, God shrugs, like, “I told you so.”

  Now, you might think that based on the accuracy of those first two shots, the whole thing would’ve been over in less than a minute.

  But those first two shots were lucky.

  These guys aren’t professional archers. They’re not out bow-hunting every day. They’ve probably had some experience with the thing, but they’re rusty, you know? What do you expect? Have you ever tried using a bow and arrow? It’s hard as shit.

  So twenty minutes later, they’re still there.

  All told, they miss about 95% of their shots. A lot of time gets taken up retrieving arrows, lining up the next shot, and so on. Their muscles are getting tired, their forearms are getting rubbed raw by the bowstring. God’s checking his watch like, “I gotta get back,” and Lamech’s looking more and more like a pincushion – one in his arm, balls, stomach, ear, knee and hand. He’s not so much terrified any more as he is just plain frustrated, like, “Will you get this over with already?”

  Zillah lands the final shot through his windpipe and the guy finally shuts up and dies.

  God cuts him loose and stays there while they bury the body, making sure the coast is clear. Adah and Zillah are knee-deep in the earth, digging with shovels. Adah’s like, “No, don’t trouble yourself. We got this.”

  God lights another cigarette. He says, “I just let you kill a guy.”

  “We were probably gonna kill him anyway.”

  “Yeah, except now you still get to go to heaven.”

  They figure it’s a good deal and keep digging.

  Back at the camp, God drops the widows home and tells them not to breathe a word of what happened. They’ll think Lamech went out and got himself eaten or fell down a cliff or something. They say no problem, but where’s he going so soon?

  God says he has to get back, but the ladies are looking at him like some shit’s about to go down and suddenly whatever’s going on in heaven doesn’t seem so important.

  They leave their clothes at the door and disappear inside.

  If this were an old sitcom, this is the part where God looks directly at the camera, gives a shrug and a knowing smile with his eyebrows raised like, “What’s a guy to do?”, and goes in after them.

  GENESIS 6-9

  God Kills Everyone (Except Noah)

  One night, God invites a few angels around for a barbecue.

  The least angelic among them is Samyaza (or Sam for short), and he’s looking at all the ladies down on earth like, “Wouldn’t mind gettin’ me some of that.”

  If you’ve seen Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, Samyaza’s the one who looks like what would happen if a Machamp and a Geodude had a baby, and that baby for some reason had the gravelly voice of Golden Globe winner Nick Nolte.

  Anyway, when God ducks inside to get cigars, Sam says to the others, “Look, I’m sick of this fucking place. I’m sick of angels, and I’m sick of the goddamn fucking missionary position. I’ve been watching a few of these human girls and they’re absolutely filthy. If you’re keen, fellas, I say we make a run for it.”

  So that’s what they do.

  They wait until later that night when God’s passed out drunk. Enoch’s draped over him, kicking every now and then like a dog dreaming that he’s running. There’s empty bottles and drug paraphernalia everywhere. Angels in various states of undress.

  Sam
and his band of merry men drop down to earth and spread throughout the human population like a tidal wave of angelic semen. Presumably, they run into the local villages buck-naked and screaming like Vikings, kidnapping women and carrying them off into the night, killing anyone who tries to stop them.

  There is another, less cinematic possibility, which is that they’re just really handsome, charming dudes. Maybe instead of a rape frenzy, they just walk into villages like rock stars and the ladies are all over them. You know the saying, “God only knows?” Well, that doesn’t apply here, because God’s passed out drunk while all this is taking place.

  Whatever happens, all we know for sure is eventually women start giving birth to angel-human hybrids called Nephilim.

  And the Nephilim are fucking giants.

  That’s right.

  Giants.

  It’s not bad enough that God cursed Eve and all women to suffer through the pain of childbirth when he kicked her and Adam out of Eden – now they’re forced to push a literal giant out of them.

  Anyway, I want to explain a little bit about why interspecies breeding maybe isn’t always such a great idea.

  First of all, the offspring are generally sterile, so you get all the shitty things about a person without them being able to do the one thing they’re supposed to do, which is reproduce.

  Second, you end up with ridiculous names like liger (lion/tiger), wholpin (whale/dolphin), cama (camel/llama) and jaglion (I’ll let you figure that one out).

  Yes, those are all actual things that exist or have existed in the world.

  Anything crossed with a zebra automatically takes the absurdity factor and cranks it up to eleven.

  Don’t believe me?

  Combine it with a horse, you get a zorse.

  Combine it with a pony, you get a zony.

  And my personal favourite – combine it with a donkey, you get a zonkey.

  (Alternatively, you could call a zebra/donkey a zeedonk, but I feel like zonkey rolls off the tongue a little better.)

  Get into the second generation of hybridisation, shit starts getting real crazy.

  Cross a lion with a ligress (lion/tigress), you get a liliger.

  Cross a tiger with a tigoness (tiger/lioness), you get a titigon.

  Cross a leopard with a jagupardess (jaguar/leopardess), you get a leojagupardess.

  I’m going to stop now because I think I’ve killed whatever point I was trying to make.

  Where were we, again?

  Oh, yeah....

  So, Sam and the angels are teaching humanity all about art and science and doggy style and weapons and shit, imparting all this knowledge they’re not supposed to impart, while God’s upstairs losing his fucking mind, saying humans are supposed to figure that shit out on their own. He invites those cocksuckers around for a barbecue out of the goodness of his heart and look what happens. They can’t wait to jump into his little science experiment and start fucking shit up.

  This is why he was afraid of Adam and Eve eating from the Tree of Life and becoming immortal – it blurred that line between divine and human, and he wanted to keep that line sharp. Now, with the arrival of an angel-human version of a zonkey, everything’s going to shit.

  He paces furiously while Enoch packs a bong and offers him a hit.

  “No, I don’t wanna fucking smoke. Jesus Christ. How about you help me figure out how to get back at these guys? I can’t send angels after them – they’re fucking angels...”

  “Well, someone’s in a mood.”

  God lets out a frustrated sigh. “I’m not in a mood. I fucking hate it when you say that.”

  “Fine, I won’t say anything then.”

  He takes a hit from the bong. God just ignores him.

  Things had been a little tense lately since Enoch brought up the idea of adoption. God said he had enough on his plate, he didn’t have time for kids. So, of course, that led to a huge fight about him working too much and not paying any attention to Enoch, who just sits around the house smoking weed all day and watching Scrubs. Yeah, real good parent he’s going to turn out to be.

  But God doesn’t want to get into it right now.

  He has to figure out a way to deal with these fucking angels.

  Meanwhile, the fucking angels are trying to figure out a way to deal with the fucking Nephilim.

  The giants are running rampant, killing all the livestock, ripping all the crops out of the ground.

  They eat fucking everything.

  And when everything’s gone, they turn on the people. Start eating them.

  Combine that with all the evil shit humans are doing – from Cain’s murder to Lamech’s polygamy – and God’s like, “Fuck it, that’s it.”

  So first, he figures part of the problem is the lifespan of these sinful motherfuckers.

  I know we’ve already been over this, but just to reiterate – these guys are living for almost a thousand years apiece.

  If that were still the case today, we’d be able to go visit William the Conqueror in his nursing home and ask him about the Battle of Hastings in 1066. He probably wouldn’t remember a fucking thing about it, but you could still ask him.

  William the Conqueror, in turn, could have received battlefield advice from the Roman Emperor Constantine, and would have only just missed out on talking tactics with Caesar.

  It also means that by the time Noah was born, everyone had just gotten back from Adam’s funeral. That’s how long the fucker lived – he still had fifty years on his ticket when his great-great-great-great-great-great grandson was born. This in a time when guys are generally waiting until they hit a century before they start cranking out kids.

  And don’t even get me started on Noah – he didn’t get busy procreating until he was 500 fucking years old.

  So, finally, you have to imagine God’s like, “This is getting ridiculous,” and chops the lifespan down to what we know it as today – like 120, max.

  Now, people are dying off quicker, but they’re not any better behaved. In fact, it seems like they’re actually getting worse. Like they’re cramming a thousand years worth of sinning into a hundred.

  Well played, humanity.

  So what does God do next?

  He kills...fucking...everyone.

  But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

  Let’s briefly circle back 600 years...

  Back on Seth’s side of the family, there’s a guy named Lamech witnessing the birth of his son, Noah.

  This isn’t the same Lamech we saw tied to a tree and riddled with arrows last episode.

  That Lamech is dead.

  He was also on Cain’s side of the family.

  Did I mention the early chapters of the Bible have a real problem with name scarcity?

  Now, apart from being totally freaked out because childbirth is terrifying, Lamech has all his hopes pinned on this kid to save them from their miserable existence.

  See, back when God threw a hissy fit and cursed Eve and all women to suffer childbirth, he also cursed the ground so men would have a hard time growing crops.

  Okay, not as bad as childbirth, but people gotta eat, yeah?

  Anyway, it’s been a rough couple of winters. They had to eat a few of the younger, weaker, slower kids and Lamech’s starting to think he’s developed a taste for it.

  Now, whenever he’s hungry and he sees another person and no one else is around, he actually has to talk himself down from killing that person and eating them.

  And sometimes he can’t.

  He doesn’t want to feel that way any more, so he’s counting on Noah to turn things around. For some reason, Noah’s the guy. Not him, not Methuselah. Not fucking Jared.

  Noah.

  Doesn’t seem fair to put that kind of pressure on a baby. But...turns out they were right.

  Noah, like goody two-shoes Enoch, is one of the few who stays faithful to God in a world that’s rapidly going to shit.

  He says to Noah, “Noah...you need to build yours
elf an ark.”

  “An ark?”

  “Yes, a fucking ark. What, are you deaf?”

  “What do I need an ark for? I live in the middle of a fucking desert.”

  “Well, smartass, not for long. I’m gonna flood the whole world and start over.”

  “Jesus... That seems a little excessive, doesn’t it?”

  “You got a better idea? Everyone except you, it seems like all they do is think up the most evil, horrific shit they can and then do it. You know, I saw a couple of kids beat an old man to death with his own cane and then piss on his corpse. Kids. What am I supposed to do with that?”

  Noah shrugs. “Jeez, I don’t know.”

  “And they’re just gonna grow up and start fucking, and then there’ll be another generation of old man-beating, corpse-pissing assholes, and then they’ll grow up to do the exact same thing. I’m just getting real fucking sick of it, man. This isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I made you guys. I figure just wipe the slate clean and start fresh, y’know?”

  Noah thinks about it.

  “Can I bring my family?”

  “Of course you can bring your family. How far do you think humanity’s gonna get if I just put you on the ark by yourself and kill everyone else?”

  “True.”

  “Also, it’s gotta be big enough for the animals.”

  Noah frowns. “What?”

  “Yeah, you gotta take two of every animal, male and female, so they can repopulate after the flood.”

  “Are you kidding me? I’m not a fucking zoologist. I don’t even know what all the animals are, let alone where they live.”

  “Well, you better figure it out.”

  Noah thinks.

  “How am I gonna actually get two of every animal onto the ark? I don’t have any experience trapping wild animals. I’m gonna get fucking eaten alive.”

  “What are you talking about? You’ve got loads of experience with animals.”

  “Yeah, like sheep and goats and shit. I’m not worried about them. What I’m worried about is trying to trap a half-ton grizzly bear. What am I gonna do, just come up to it with a butterfly net while it’s hunting for fish? It’ll tear me apart and use the net to catch it’s dinner. And even if I do get it on the ark, it’ll just go on a fucking rampage and kill everything else. Throw a couple lions and tigers in there, it’ll be a bloodbath. If I’m being honest, I think I’d rather take my chances treading water.”