Genesis

by Jack Geurts

  “Uh...I’m Jake.”

  “The Jake?” one of them (Uriel – Uri, for short) says, amazed. “The guy who wore his brother’s skin to trick his dad?”

  The rest of the group eagerly await his answer.

  Jake swallows, surprised they’d heard about that. “Uh...I guess.”

  The group proceeds to lose their collective shit, laughing and saying things like, “No way,” or “I heard about this guy”.

  “Here, man.” The apparent leader of the group, Mike, passes him the joint and he takes a puff. Uri takes a beer out of the case, cracks the top and hands it to him.

  “What’s this?” Jake says.

  “Don’t ask. Just drink.”

  A great slogan for any up-and-coming liquor brand.

  Or maybe just a solid catchphrase for a date-rapist.

  Like any impressionable young man, Jake doesn’t inquire any further into the contents of the liquid he’s about to imbibe, but rather, immediately gives in to peer pressure and takes a sip.

  Instantly, the universe doesn’t seem so cold and unknowable. He realises what love is, what wars are fought for, and promptly drains the rest of the bottle with manic intensity.

  The guys laugh, and Uri hands him another.

  “What do I do with this?” Jake says, holding up the empty bottle.

  “Toss it.”

  Jake frowns, then throws the bottle off the staircase and into the night air. A few seconds later, he hears the sound of glass shattering and someone shouting in pain.

  The guys laugh again.

  “Nice one, man.”

  “Good throw.”

  Jake’s thinking, “These guys are fucking awesome,” and starts on his next beer.

  Gradually, the ground gets further and further away until it’s just a dark shadow beneath him. Suddenly, the stars are all around them and they’re approaching a door at the top of the staircase.

  A door in the night sky.

  Mike passes the joint, then knocks on the door. A small slot is opened and a pair of eyes study the group.

  “You on the list?”

  “Yeah, under Mike.”

  The eyes look down, presumably at a sheet. “Not seeing it, man.”

  “Michael, maybe?”

  The bouncer continues to look.

  Mike gets frustrated. “Dude, I’m a fucking archangel, alright. Just let us in.”

  The bouncer stares at him, unimpressed.

  “Are Raph and Gabe in there? Go ask them, they’ll vouch for me.”

  The bouncer continues to stare, then slides the eye-hole shut.

  “Jesus Christ,” Mike says. A few of the guys laugh.

  Mike turns away from the door, opening his robe and pissing down to the earth far below. They hear shouts of indignation, people like, “Ugh, what the fuck?!” and “Who’s doing that?!”

  The guys laugh and one of them, Kokabiel (or Coco, for short), does that thing where you grab someone and jostle them like you’re about to push them off, then catch them.

  Mike shouts in fear – “Fuck!” – then laughs. “Ah, you bastard. Cut me off mid-stream. Man, that stings.”

  He belts his robe back up and turns to face the door just as the bouncer opens it. He gestures them inside with a exasperated, “Get in here before I change my mind,” kind of vibe.

  So in they go.

  They enter through what appears to be a gate in the fence, and Jake finds himself staring at the yard of a fairly-modest house. Three bed, two bath – max.

  Music is playing from a sound system somewhere inside, and angels are scattered all around in groups, drinking and smoking and laughing. A few have stripped down and jumped in the hot tub. Others are in deck chairs on the overgrown lawn, huddled around a half-drum fire.

  No central-casting shit here – equal number of dudes and chicks in attendance. All races represented equally.

  Well, at least the major ones.

  A drunken angel over by the keg calls out to Mike.

  “Hey, yo, Mike – you wanna hit this?”

  That’s Samyaza (or Sam, for short) – we’ve met him before. Remember, he was the guy who instigated the whole Nephilim thing that more or less led to the flood.

  Mike laughs. “Sammy! You know I do!”

  Jake quickly finds himself all alone as Mike and his crew head over to the keg. The pale young man just stands there, staring at the otherworldly landscape, thinking, “Is this heaven?”

  Quick sidebar...

  I probably should have mentioned this a few episodes ago, but in the world of the Old Testament, there isn’t actually a concept of heaven or hell. At least, not as we know it today.

  There is the concept of an afterlife, but morality isn’t attached to it. ‘Sheol’ is the destination for good and bad people alike. It won’t be until later that the afterlife is kind of split into, to use NBC terminology, a ‘good place’ and a ‘bad place’.

  At the point in history/mythology we’re talking about, it doesn’t matter what you did in life, everyone ends up in the same place.

  Be like if one person went to Harvard, one person cleaned the floors at that same institution, and they both took their families to eat at McDonald’s that night.

  I’ll let you be the judge of who’s good and who’s bad in that scenario. I guess it depends on if you’re an elitist, or if you think there’s anything inherently good about being poor.

  And yes, that was a Good Will Hunting reference. You’re welcome for the free plug, Matt.

  The reason I’m bringing this up is that, until now, I’ve used ‘heaven’ to describe what amounts to God’s house, basically, and I’m going to continue to do that. Partly because the imagery works. Mostly because I’m lazy.

  Just know that it is not, technically speaking, the correct usage of the word.

  And we’re back in...

  As he scans the backyard, Jake’s eyes land on a solitary figure sitting in a deck chair. There’s a cooler full of beer beside him, one in his hand. He’s staring down at a puddle at his feet – it appears to be a previously-dug hole that had filled with rainwater.

  Jake goes over to him. “Hey, you alright, man?”

  The figure looks up, as if roused from a trance. “What? Sorry.” His eyes focus, recognising the person in front of him. “Oh, hey, Jake. How’d you get up here?”

  Distracted by how this guy knows his name, Jake turns, seeing Mike do a keg-stand while the others cheer him on.

  “I...uh...came with those guys.” He points vaguely in that direction. The guy in the deck chair nods – he doesn’t seem to care, anyway.

  “You want a beer?”

  Jake swallows all the drool that had instantly filled his mouth the second he saw those icy-cold brews. “Uh...sure. Why not?”

  Way to play it cool, Jakey boy.

  The guy hands him a bottle and Jake sits down, opens it, sips.

  “You know it’s my birthday today?” the guy says.

  “Oh, happy birthday.”

  “Thanks.”

  Jake takes another uneasy sip. “Look, I gotta be honest, man – I don’t really know who you are. I just kind of got dragged along.”

  “No worries,” the guy says. “Happens to the best of us. I’m God.”

  Then he takes a sip like it’s no big deal.

  Jake stares blankly for a few moments before God notices.

  “You think I’m fucking with you?”

  “You’re God? Like the God?”

  He belches. “The one and only.”

  A million questions race through Jake’s head, but he can’t pin one down. Instead, he follows God’s line of vision down to the puddle.

  Wary, Jake says, “Whatcha lookin’ at?”

  “Your world.”

  “My...” Jake frowns, squints at the puddle. In the outdoor lights, he can just make out an orb of some kind, suspended in the water. “That’s...my world?”

  God nods, takes a swig.

  For the second time in
half a minute, Jake is left speechless.

  After a moment, he says, “It’s round.”

  “Yeah? What did you think, it was flat?”

  “Kinda, yeah. Can you blame me?”

  God shrugs. “I guess not.”

  It takes Jake a moment to process everything. “You made my world in a puddle in your backyard?”

  “Yep. Dug a hole to start the porch. Never got around to it. I guess it filled up with rainwater, and, well...”

  “Jesus Christ...”

  Jake’s gone pale – yes, even paler than usual. He’s basically transparent at this point. His mind reels as all his assumptions about the nature of the universe come crumbling down.

  He can see his world floating there in the dirty rainwater. The world he was born in, raised in. The world where he learned to walk and talk and read and write. The world where he wore his brother’s skin and tricked him out of his inheritance. The world where he discovered weed.

  Meanwhile, God and his degenerate angel friends are up here having a rager like it’s nothing.

  Like it’s a hole filled with water in a backyard.

  Which it is.

  “I gotta make sure no one falls in,” God says, absently, tossing his empty bottle into the bushes, taking another one out of the cooler. “I know it might not seem like it, but I am looking out for you.”

  Jake shakes his head, trying to clear it, to think straight. “Is this a dream?”

  God looks at him. “Do you want it to be a dream?”

  *

  Jake sits bolt upright, sweating, breathing heavily.

  It’s just before dawn. He looks around, seeing nothing but sand and the city of Luz in the distance, silhouetted by the brightening sky.

  He rubs his face, wondering if it was all a dream. Then he notices the burned-out roach that had fallen off his chest when he woke up.

  “Jesus...” he thinks. “I gotta lay off the weed.”

  Also, might be a good idea to put your joint out before you fall asleep with it on your chest. That’s how people burn to death, Jake.

  He looks up at the slowly-fading stars, and catches himself thinking that maybe it wasn’t a dream. That maybe God really is up there and really is looking down on him now, watching him.

  Only one way to find out.

  He takes the rock he was using for a pillow and carves a word into it.

  Bethel.

  ‘God’s house’.

  He stands it upright, forming it into an altar with a bunch of other, smaller rocks. He kneels before it to say a prayer. Something to the effect of, “If that was real, come down and confirm it.”

  But you know, more eloquent and Old Testament-y.

  In effect, he’s renaming the pagan, Canaanite city of Luz with a nice, God-fearing Hebrew name.

  No response from the big guy.

  Very well.

  Jake stands and opens his robe, pissing all over the makeshift altar. He holds his middle finger up to the sky while he does it, awaiting reprisal. A lightning bolt, an earthquake. Something.

  Nothing happens.

  Now, he just feels like an idiot – peeing on some rocks in the desert.

  Slowly, his anger dissolves.

  “What the fuck am I doing?” Jake says, doing up his belt. “It was just a dream.”

  He slings his pack over his shoulder, takes one last look at the sky, then sets off toward Haran, leaving the lazily-constructed, piss-soaked altar in his rear-view.

  *

  Up above, God’s watching the whole thing play out. He’s zoomed in on the desert outside the city of Luz where Jake spent the night, like using Google Maps with a touch screen.

  All around him, the backyard is trashed, angels are passed out everywhere. God’s wearing sunglasses to block out the daylight and taking his hangover cure – cold pizza and a Bloody Mary. Easy on the Worcestershire sauce.

  In the background, Raph’s got the grill fired up and he’s making breakfast sandwiches for the early birds, Pina Colada in hand.

  As God watches Jake build the altar and kneel down to pray before it, he pushes his sunglasses up and leans forward, not believing what he’s seeing.

  “Raph!” he shouts. “Get over here!”

  Raph leaves the grill and comes over to join the big guy. “Jesus, man, easy on the eardrums. The fuck’s going on?”

  He peers down and sees Jake kneeling there, praying.

  “See that?” God says. “I knew I’d get a good one eventually.”

  “But didn’t he steal his brother’s skin and shit?”

  “Yeah, but...look. He’s coming around. I might actually, finally, get someone who isn’t a total...”

  Then Jake whips out his penis and pisses all over the altar, flipping them the bird while he does it.

  Silence between the two.

  Raph lingers a moment, unable to bear the awkwardness. Slowly, he backs up and away from the big guy.

  God just slides the sunglasses down over his eyes and leans back in the chair – not angry, just disappointed.

  “Goddamn it,” he says, and lifts the Bloody Mary to his mouth, trying to find the straw with his tongue.

  GENESIS 29-30

  Brother-In-Law, Sister-In-Bed

  Not far outside Haran, two shepherds are sitting around a fire, shooting the shit. Their flock of sheep is huddled off to the side. It’s a night like any other...until they hear footsteps approaching.

  They turn and see a hooded figure walking up to them. His face is completely hidden, but the way he’s carrying himself, he looks weary. Exhausted.

  “Hold it,” one of them says, and the figure stops.

  He just stands there, breathing. Wheezing, almost. The shepherds exchange a ‘what the fuck?’ kind of glance.

  “Who are you?”

  No response.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Haran...” the figure says. “Laban...”

  His voice is raspy, like he hasn’t had a sip of water in days. The shepherds grow increasingly wary. They’re from Haran, after all. And they know Laban. In fact...

  One of them stands up, trying to mediate the situation. “Listen, man...you’re really freaking us out with that hood. The sun isn’t out, it’s unnecessary. Just take it off and let’s talk about this like normal human beings.”

  No response for a few seconds. Then, slowly, the figure removes his hood, exposing his ghost-white skin and blood-red eyes.

  The men scream in terror and run for their lives, falling over each other in their haste to get away, leaving the sheep to be devoured by this pale-skinned demon.

  “It’s just a pigment deficiency,” Jake calls after them. No use. He lets out a sigh. “Every time...”

  I feel like I need to re-stress how odd white skin is in this story.

  Unless otherwise specified, people tend to assume that the characters in a book are white.

  They also assume that they’re cisgender and heterosexual, but we won’t get into that here.

  Everyone we’ve met so far in this story, as well as everyone we’re going to meet, will not conform to the image you’re probably picturing if you think that those paintings of Jesus as a delicate white guy with long flowing hair are accurate.

  That’s not to say that there aren’t (or weren’t) light-skinned people who lived in the Middle East, but I just wanted it to be something you’re thinking about as you read.

  So when the shepherds scream and run off because Jake has albinism, they’re not being dicks – as would be the case in our time – they’re simply reacting to something they’ve probably never seen before (ie. a person with white skin).

  Still, it’s hard not to feel sorry for the guy they’re running away from.

  Jake spies a waterskin by the fire and his eyes light up. He ran out yesterday morning and has been slowly dying of thirst ever since.

  Jake pounces on the bottle, unscrewing the cap and gulping down it’s contents so quickly that he ends up pouring mos
t of it over his face and neck. The stuff he actually gets in his mouth goes down the wrong way,

  Within seconds, he’s reduced to a coughing, spluttering, retching mess.

  It’s actually pretty disgusting to look at.

  Long strings of bile and saliva hanging from his lips. His face all purply-red. Not his finest moment.

  When he recovers, he tries to drink from that waterskin again, only to find it empty.

  Way to go, Jake. Sweet survival skills.

  Luckily, there’s another skin nearby and Jake shows a little more restraint this time. He takes actual mouthfuls and actually swallows them. There, that’s better, isn’t it? More haste, less speed.

  When he’s slaked his thirst, Jake sits by the fire and warms his hands. Apart from the shepherds fleeing in terror at the very sight of him, this actually turned out pretty good.

  It lasts about 2.5 seconds.

  Jake hears the clatter of sticks being dropped and looks over to see a woman, Rachel (probably don’t need a nickname for her – Rach, maybe?) standing there, frozen.

  She’s returned from collecting firewood to find her fellow shepherds gone and in their place, a hooded, white-skinned dude who probably looks, to her, like the Grim Reaper.

  ...if such a concept exists in her mind.

  ...which it almost certainly doesn’t.

  Still, it’s fairly safe for her to assume that this guy has killed and eaten her friends.

  Jake stands up slowly, holding his hands out to show he means her no harm.

  “I know how it looks,” Jake says. “Those screams were them running away. I swear I didn’t kill them and devour their corpses.”

  A pause.

  “Oh, good,” Rachel says. “Now I can rest easy.”

  Jake instantly regrets his choice of words. “Look, I’ve just come all the way from Beer-sheeba. I’m looking for Laban.”

  Rachel’s facial expression changes from mildly-terrified to somewhat-curious. “You’re looking for Laban?”

  “Yeah...why? Do you know him?”

  “He’s my dad.”

  “He’s my uncle.”

  Their eyes lock.

  A long, sexually-charged moment ensues.

  As we’ve been over several times already, in the world of the Old Testament, the closer related you are to someone, the more attractive you find them.