Genesis

by Jack Geurts

  For this, he is thoroughly hated by the local community, as most of his experiments result in damage to his neighbours’ property, or to his neighbours themselves.

  An example, you say?

  I thought you’d never ask.

  How about the time when his ‘driverless wagon’ ploughed through the tent of a young family who’d just welcomed their fourth child into the world? How about the time when he decided to send his wife into orbit via a crudely-constructed catapult?

  See what I mean?

  None of this is to mention the fact that his dogged pursuit of what he refers to as ‘science’ results in him often neglecting to bathe (hence the name).

  Yes, Elon the Musk is a strange cat, indeed.

  His daughter, Basemath (or Bas, for short), is Esau’s first wife.

  Judy follows shortly thereafter.

  Eventually, Esau takes them both home to meet his traitorous mom and brother under the pretence of reconciliation, but really, he just wants to high-road them.

  “See, look how noble I can be? I’m willing to overlook the fact that you flayed me alive and stole everything from me. Why can’t you just accept that?”

  Get over yourself, Esau.

  And that’s pretty much the response he gets when he rides into his old camp at Beer-sheeba. Becca’s waiting out the front with her now-trademark battle axe strapped to her back and a bunch of armed servants behind her.

  “Turn around,” she says. “Take those Canaanite whores and go back where you came from.”

  The wives give each other a look like, “Is this bitch serious?”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary,” Esau says. “Also, you realise that this is Canaan, yeah? Where you’re standing right now?”

  Becca just stares him down. “Not for long.”

  Esau goes, “You sure about this? You really want Jake continuing on the family line? I’m a hunter and a warrior. I can provide for us, fight our battles.”

  “If you’re a warrior,” Becca says, taking a few steps forward and unsheathing her battle axe. “Prove it.”

  Silence.

  The wind whistles between them and a tumbleweed blows past.

  Esau swallows. He briefly weighs the pros and cons of fighting his own mother to the death, the likelihood of succeeding without a weapon or any skin on his body.

  He goes to say something, then thinks better of it. He turns the wagon around and drives off.

  His wives give each other another look like, “Maybe we hitched our goats to the wrong post.”

  That’s the kind of authentic biblical slang you just don’t hear nowadays.

  Needless to say, the trip home is pretty quiet. You could probably go so far as to say the tension in the air was cuttable.

  If Esau hadn’t been flayed alive, his knuckles would be white on the reins. His knuckle-bones are white, sure, but they’re covered over with muscle and sinew, so you can’t really see them.

  I digress...

  It isn’t long before Bas speaks up. “I can’t believe you let your mom show you up like that.”

  Judy sucks in sharply through her teeth, squirming in the awkwardness.

  Bas frowns at her, oblivious. “What?”

  Esau says nothing, grips the reins a little tighter, squeezing blood from his exposed muscles like water from a sponge.

  “If that was me,” Bas goes on. “I woulda been all like ‘hell, no’ and slapped that bitch in her wrinkled old face.”

  Finally, Esau snaps. “Your mom voluntarily took part in the world’s first space program. How did that end again? Oh, yeah, that’s right. With her turned into raspberry coulis all over some sharp rocks. I wouldn’t talk if I was you.”

  Bas goes quiet for a moment, unable to argue. Then, in a smaller voice... “She’s still got the record.”

  “For what?” Esau says, baffled. “Height?!”

  Bas grumbles and does that thing where you sarcastically imitate what the person said without actually saying it.

  “I heard that,” he says, without turning around.

  When they get back to camp, Esau ignores everyone and goes straight into his tent. He does that thing where you wash your face off in the basin and look up into the mirror like, “Who am I?”, which no one ever actually does in real life.

  Except...as we’ve been over a few times, there are no mirrors in the Old Testament.

  Yet, somehow, when Esau looks up at the tent wall behind his basin, he is looking at an image of himself.

  But it’s not a reflected image.

  It’s his own...fucking...disembodied skin!

  Esau snuck back into the camp the night that Ishmael cut his own head off and grabbed Neb’s body, which was still sown neatly into the Skoot. It served a dual purpose:

  It allowed him to get his skin back.

  It allowed him to return the body of Ishmael’s first-born son to his family so they could give him a proper burial, which, after a slight alteration in the recounting of how it all went down – namely, that Becca killed Neb and Ishmael, not him – earned him their eternal gratitude.

  You might be wondering – why not just put the skin back on, Esau?

  Since we’ve accepted the fact that Esau can survive without his skin, and that the skin isn’t rotting away without a host body, it’s a damn good question. And the answer is, simply, that he has tried to put it back on.

  Only...it didn’t fit.

  Or, more specifically, the skin didn’t automatically re-attach itself to the muscle. Esau was imagining that perhaps the skin would remember his body and instantly fit to the contours of it like an Iron Man suit. Instead, he got the thing on and it didn’t feel like he had his skin back.

  It felt like, well...it felt like he was wearing a full-body suit made out of skin.

  After about three seconds, he was like, “Nope, this isn’t gonna work,” and stripped down to his sinews. He then hung the disembodied skin above his basin like he was starring in a Buffalo Bill prequel movie.

  You might be asking yourself why he did that, and I honestly can’t tell you. Maybe he wanted to remind himself of what he’d lost. Maybe he wanted it to fuel his thirst for vengeance.

  Maybe he’s just got a problem with hoarding.

  Whatever the case, Esau takes out Ishmael’s stash, rolls a joint, and starts getting a good bake on. He’s feeling a little lost, a little despondent. Christ, he’s forty years old and what does he have to show for it?

  Two wives and no skin.

  He’s been cut out of the deal entirely.

  Jake’s going to inherit everything – the flocks, the servants, the promise of a great nation.

  He’s been at it for a few hours when he gets an idea.

  Springing up from the couch, he goes outside and runs through the camp to find one of Ishmael’s daughters, Mahalath.

  (No, not Mahalalel – that was Enoch’s grandfather. Jesus, what’s next? You going to say all Chinese people look the same? Shame on you.)

  Anyway, he comes up to Mahalath (May, for short). She’s washing clothes by the well with some of the other women and he swings her around, grabbing her by the arms and staring at her with wide, red, glassy eyes, shouting, “Will you marry me?”

  May just stares at him.

  If there’s anything more terrifying than a skinless man surprising you out of nowhere, just try to imagine one proposing in a weed-induced frenzy. Maybe he’s on that synthetic shit.

  But May’s used to it by now. She just shrugs his wet, skinless hands off and steps back, examining the bloody prints on her sleeve.

  “Goddamn it, I just washed this. What did we say about touching?”

  “Sorry.”

  She sighs. “Okay, first of all...good morning to you, too. Second of all, how was your trip? How have I been, you ask? I’ve been great, Esau. Thanks so much for your genuine interest.”

  She shakes her head and takes a basket of washed clothes over to a line that’s been strung up between two trees, start
s pegging them up.

  Esau follows her over. “Is that a yes?”

  “It’s not a yes.”

  “But it’s not a no.”

  May sighs. “What do you even want to marry me for, anyway? You’ve already got two wives. And judging by what I’ve heard around the camp, that may even be too many.”

  Esau scoffs to hide his embarrassment. “Who said that? Doesn’t matter. Here, let me help you with that...”

  He goes to take a freshly-laundered tunic, but the second he touches it, the clean fabric is stained red with blood.

  “Damn it, Esau, you’re getting blood everywhere! Just...stand over there. Over there.”

  Esau does as he’s told. Once he’s a safe distance from the clothes, he continues.

  “Look, my wives are both Canaanites and my mom’s really fucking racist. I’ll level with you...” Esau takes one last drag – a real deep one – then flicks the roach. “The only reason I married them both to begin with was to make her angry, which I agree was pretty juvenile...”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah, I do. I just admitted it. I’m trying to get back in my mom’s good graces, alright. It’s the only way I can get my inheritance back.”

  “Didn’t your dad already give it to Jake?”

  “Yeah, but Jake stole it!”

  “Hmm, I wonder where I’ve heard that before. Oh, yeah, that’s right. Every day since you got here. Change the record, man. This one’s broken.”

  May, you sassy minx.

  “Look, I’m sorry if I’ve gone on about it, but it’s kind of a big deal, alright. It’s an entire fucking nation we’re talking about here. Like Canaan or Egypt, but...” Esau frowns, seeing a gap in his knowledge. “Huh, I actually don’t know what we’ll be called.”

  “What they’ll be called, you mean?”

  May keeps pegging up clothes, blocking him from view. Esau moves around so she can see him.

  “This is serious,” he says. “I could be the father of a great nation. And you know what that makes you, if you marry me?”

  May pushes a tunic aside, eyebrow raised. “The mother of a great nation?”

  “Exactly. Pretty much a queen.”

  May’s thinking about it. Like, really thinking about it.

  Then she shakes her head. “It’s pointless. Why does impressing your mom matter? Isn’t Jake the one you need to take care of?”

  “Jake’s a momma’s boy. He’s got albinism, so he needs to stay out of the sun – which, I mean, you can’t help the cards you’re dealt. I don’t judge him for that. Look at me. Fuck. How much of a hypocrite would I be if...” He shakes his head, focusing. “I’m getting off course. The point is, he’s lazy as balls. She does fucking everything for him.”

  “You’re saying she’s the power behind the throne?”

  “If you want to get all Stark and Lannister about it, I guess.”

  “And you think that if you win her over, you’ll be able to slide back into Jake’s role?”

  “Hey, it was mine first! I’m the eldest, the most capable. The only reason she flayed me alive was because she wanted to get back at dad for passing her off as his sister – as well as generally being a shitty husband and father.”

  “Seems a little excessive.”

  “Yeah, well...she’s a little excessive. Now that Ike’s dead and she’s stuck with Jake – who’s basically useless...I think if I showed up with a non-foreign wife, she’d see that I’m the clear choice for father of a great nation.”

  May thinks about it.

  “Look, I wasn’t that close to my dad, but she did kill him.”

  “She wounded him. He cut his own head off.”

  May stares blankly. “You’re right, that’s much better. Still, I don’t think she’d like me any more than your Canaanite wives.”

  “No, but that’s the beauty of it. You’re still family. And as we all know, the best couples are the ones that share the most genetic material. The closer, the better. We’re like...second cousins or something, right? That’s gotta count for something.”

  May pegs up her last robe and looks back at the women by the well. She weighs it up:

  Mother of a great nation.

  Aging spinster.

  Shit, she’s not getting any younger and it’s slim pickings out here. Even if Esau’s a skinless stoner hell-bent on power and glory, he’s not...terrible to look at. He’s got a six-pack, at least.

  I mean, I guess everyone has a six pack when they don’t have any fat or skin, but...it’s still there.

  And he’s tall...ish.

  Sure, why not?

  So that night, they get married and the very next day, they head back to Becca’s camp at Beer-sheeba – sans Judy and Bas.

  “Just Married” is painted on the back of the wagon, and in the place of tin cans (to ward off evil spirits, I think?), they’ve tied a bunch of sheep and goat skins to the end of ropes. This is either the biblical equivalent, or it’s just some tasteless joke about Esau having no skin.

  Either way, the hollowed-out animals drag limply through the sand, not having quite the same impact as tin cards on a hard surface, but it’s striking all the same.

  And sure to scare the absolute shit out of any lurking evil spirits.

  Ah, weddings.

  *

  But Jake won’t be in Beer-sheeba when Esau gets there.

  In fact, he hasn’t been there in a while.

  That’s because Jake’s headed off to find a wife of his own.

  His mom was pretty clear about it. After Ike’s death, she sat him down and, in no uncertain terms, told him that this free ride was coming to a stop.

  He’d been holed up in his tent, working on the next Great Mesopotamian Novel (the Epic of Gilgamesh was one high bar to clear), while Becca waited on him hand and foot.

  No more.

  “Enough of this frustrated-writer bullshit, Jake. If you were really good enough, you’d have gotten a publishing contract. Them’s facts.”

  She told him that he was going to need to start contributing. And by contributing, she didn’t mean cooking or cleaning or tending the flocks. And she certainly didn’t mean ‘entertaining’ her with excerpts from his forthcoming book.

  She meant semen.

  More broadly, she meant children. Progeny. A great nation that he could be the father of, because right now they were a cluster of tents in the desert.

  A flock of goats and sheep, some servants. That’s it.

  Sure as shit no great nation.

  But Jake was going to fix that. Boy, was he ever.

  He was heading west, and like Barney before him, his destination was Haran. More specifically, the house of Becca’s brother, Laban. The same place Barney found Becca to begin with.

  Or, in Laban’s mind, the same place Barney kidnapped Becca from after paying her dowry with counterfeit silver.

  Of course, Jake had no idea that Laban held a grudge about that. He had no idea that Laban held a grudge at all. All he knew about Laban was that he had some daughters and that Jake should marry one of them in exchange for work.

  Oh, Jake. So naïve.

  So with his hood pulled up to shield his lily-white face, Jake presses on into the great unknown.

  Becca had specifically told him not to marry any Canaanite women like Esau had done. Man, she could be racist sometimes. Instead, she wanted him to marry within the family. The closer, the better. And without any siblings, you didn’t get much closer than cousins.

  So that’s what (or rather, who) Jake is going to do.

  One of his cousins.

  He’s about halfway to Haran, near the city of Luz, when he stops for the night. Without the sun beating down, he can actually remove his hood and feel the breeze on his neck. He can also act as something of a lighthouse, because under the full moon, dude’s skin is basically glowing.

  Using a rock for a pillow, he lays out under the stars, lights up a joint.

  If you’re wondering where a pa
le-skinned momma’s boy like Jake gets his hands on quality weed, he’d salvaged the stash from Ishmael’s backpack after the self-decapitation and had been smoking more-or-less constantly ever since.

  It made everything about a thousand percent better.

  Reading, writing. Jacking off.

  Even when he was doing nothing, chilling around the tent, he’d light up just so he could see some weird shit, or to help him get to sleep.

  That’s what he’s doing now. A little hash-and-crash. Before you can say ‘impending incest’, Jake is out like a light.

  He dreams that he’s walking through the desert (real imagination on this guy – I wonder why his writing career hasn’t taken off), and he’s heading towards a huge staircase leading up to heaven. Angels are either walking up or staggering down the thing, like people coming to and from a party.

  Okay, so he’s showing a little more creativity now.

  Jake approaches the foot of the staircase and none of the angels seem to notice him. Mostly, because they’re either blind drunk or they’re intending to be.

  One dude is so hammered he’s being helped down the staircase by his slightly less-intoxicated friends. He vomits on the steps in front of him, then slips on his own vomit and tumbles the rest of the way into a moaning heap beside Jake. His friends just laugh and continue after him at a leisurely pace.

  A scream from above alerts Jake to another guy falling from an incredible height. The scream starts out small and distant, growing louder and louder until he hits the ground with a sickening thud.

  Jake ducks in behind a group of angels heading up the stairs with a case of beer. They pass around a joint. Seeing all the inebriates passing them on the way down – all the people who have been kicked out of the party – is getting them jacked.

  “Dude, this party’s gonna be so fuckin’ sweet.”

  “Last year, I hear someone actually died.”

  “Fuck, that’s so awesome.”

  “Hey, who the fuck is this?”

  They all turn to see Jake walking a little too close behind them like a creepy weirdo, trying to stay as incognito as someone with albinism and blood-red eyes can be.