Genesis

by Jack Geurts

  What the fuck else is he supposed to do?

  Not loot the city?

  Not take slaves?

  Stand by his moral convictions in the face of temptation?

  Not likely.

  *

  In the morning, Dinah wakes to see smoke rising from Shechem.

  Instantly, her blood runs cold.

  She goes outside to see the city burning and her brothers exiting the gates with a long line of grieving women and children in tow. Their wagons are piled high with stolen goods and food, and they’re herding all the stolen livestock back to the camp.

  Out in front is a weary-looking Sim, covered in (now-dried) blood. He rides right up to her and pulls a large, severed head out of his saddle bag, throwing it on the ground at her feet.

  She knows who it is before it rolls over to stare up at her with vacant, hollow eyes.

  She recognises the green skin, the insectile feelers.

  It’s Sheck.

  “You didn’t mention he turns into an ogre at night,” Sim says. “Put up a better fight than most of them.”

  Dinah’s eyes well with tears and she looks up at him, trembling with grief and rage. Sim stares back at her, dead-eyed.

  “We don’t fuck with foreigners.”

  At this, Dinah lunges at Sim, but a few of her other brothers who have already dismounted hold her back. She struggles against them but they hold her tight.

  They don’t want to be doing this – they feel guilty for their part in Sim’s plan. They feel bad for holding her back, and in that moment, they hate Sim as much as they hate themselves. As much as they pity their poor sister.

  Levi can’t bear to look. He turns away, busying himself with unsaddling his horse.

  Finally, overcome with frustration and sadness, Dinah shrugs her brothers off and runs inside, passing Leah and Rachel on their way out. She brushes their hands away as they try to console her, and Leah quickly follows her back inside.

  Rachel turns back to see the severed head, the slaves, the stolen goods and livestock. She sees the sheepish, hungover faces of the conquerors, the weary arrogance of Sim as he dismounts.

  Jake exits behind Rachel, shocked by what his sons have done. Not sensing the general vibe, he goes, “Wow! Look at all this. You guys...this is great! I can’t believe...”

  Rachel turns, shooting daggers at him.

  “I mean...” Jake clears his throat, quickly adopting the gruff tone of a disapproving parent. Still, he can’t hide the excitement in his voice. “Bad. Very bad. You shouldn’t have done this. I didn’t sign off on...” A pause. “Is that a jewel-encrusted scepter?”

  “Jake!” Rachel says.

  The patriarch shrinks. “Sorry.”

  Rachel walks up to Sim and slaps him in the face. He holds his cheek, eyes wide with anger, like he might hit her back. She glares at him, daring him to do it.

  “What about these women?” she says, gesturing to the captive Shechemites. “Your sister isn’t allowed to have a consensual, interracial relationship, but you’re allowed to take these foreign women into your bed, no problem? You don’t see the hypocrisy in that?”

  Sim composes himself.

  “No,” he says, stubbornly, “I don’t. It’s fine if we’re not equals. The prince treated Dinah like a whore. He knew what he was doing when he had sex with her before marriage, rendering her useless to a more-appropriate husband.”

  “You mean you?”

  Sim’s taken aback. “I mean someone who isn’t a Canaanite. Not to mention an ogre! You can see that he’s an ogre, yes? This isn’t just interracial shit we’re talking about, it’s interspecies. Surely, you can’t be on board with that?”

  Rachel glances down at the severed head – it’s a shock, but she tries to process it rationally. “If the ogre is as sentient as Sheck was, and if they both consented to it, then no, I don’t see a problem with it.”

  Sim scoffs. “Jeez, talk about moving the goalposts.”

  “I’m not moving the goalposts,” Rachel says. “And you didn’t know he was an ogre when you went in there. That’s not why you did it. You didn’t even do it for the slaves or the loot – that’s why your brothers did it, and why I don’t hold them as accountable as I hold you. You did it to control your sister’s sexuality, in what I can only describe as the most toxic display of masculinity I think I’ve ever seen – and I’ve been married to your father for decades! I don’t know what kind of Freudian bullshit makes you respond to news of your sister’s wedding by not only murdering the groom, but wiping out his entire city and enslaving his people. I mean, seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you, Sim?”

  The second-born doesn’t know what to say. He just stands there, speechless.

  If this were a courtroom, she’d have finished her speech with, “Case closed,” and walked out. At that point, the judge (after repeated efforts to call her back) would be forced to declare a mistrial, because that isn’t how the law works.

  Rachel turns and marches back into the tent, leaving Jake to deal with his unruly sons.

  Inside, Dinah is weeping into Leah’s chest, her mother stroking her face, comforting her. Zillie is sitting on the other side of her, stroking her arm. Rachel walks over and kneels down in front of Dinah, putting a hand on her knee. All three of them are overflowing with sympathy for the poor girl, all there to support her.

  “This isn’t over,” says Rachel. “We’ll get him back for this.”

  At that moment, Billie comes in, straightening her clothes. She sees Dinah crying and goes, “Whoa, what happened here?”

  Leah, Rachel and Zillie turn to look at her, unimpressed.

  Outside, the patriarch forces himself to focus, to not concentrate on the mouth-watering amount of slaves and goods and livestock.

  “She’s right,” Jake says. “You shouldn’t have done this. Not only have you devastated your little sister, but more importantly, you’ve ruined our relationship with the Canaanites and put us all in danger. What happens when Hamor’s allies come to trade with him or just to say, ‘What up?’ They’re gonna do to us what you did to him.”

  “Yeah, but dad...” Sim says, gesturing to everything he’s hauled out of the city. “Check out all this loot.”

  Jake swallows, feeling the warm fingers of greed caressing his nipples. He shakes his head, snapping out of it.

  “No!” he says. “I’m still angry at you. Pack everything up and get ready to move out.”

  “You want us to leave the slaves and the loot and the livestock, then?”

  Jake lowers his voice so the women inside can’t hear. “Of course I don’t want you to leave it! Pack it all up. Everything. Before we find ourselves on the business end of an ethnic cleansing.”

  With that, he heads back into the tent while his sons begin preparations to get the fuck out of Dodge.

  At that moment, Reuben walks into frame, going, “Whoa, what happened here?”

  Sim turns on him and explodes, “What do you mean ‘what happened here?’ Where the fuck were you?”

  Reuben shrugs, oblivious. “I was busy.”

  *

  Later, Jake is sharing a cigarette with God as he fills him in on what happened. Both of them are leaned against the city wall.

  “Jesus Christ...” God says, horrified. “How the fuck did you let that happen?”

  “Me?” Jake says, offended. “Where were you during all this?”

  God shrugs. “I was busy.”

  “Busy?”

  “Yes, Izzy, I was busy. We’ve been over this...”

  Jake groans. “Don’t start with that Izzy horseshit again.”

  “You agreed,” warns God.

  “I know, but...fuck, I’ve already got a son named Izzy. It’s confusing as shit.”

  “We can leave it as Israel if you want?”

  Jake sighs, kicks the dirt half-heartedly. “No...Izzy’s fine.”

  God takes a drag. “You better get out of here before the other Canaanite kings realise
what you’ve done.”

  “What’s it look like I’m doing?” He gestures to his family packing up the tents and getting everything loaded onto wagons.

  God gives him a look.

  Jake realises what he’s getting at. “Okay, fine – not me, specifically...”

  God shakes his head, flicks the cigarette away. He goes to leave when he remembers something. “Oh, yeah... Listen, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but... Reuben’s sleeping with Billie.”

  “What?” Jake says, stunned.

  “Your son and your concubine – gettin’ it on.”

  “Yeah, I heard you...”

  God takes pity on him, offers him another cigarette and then lights it for him. Jake takes a moment to process the revelation.

  “Son of a bitch...” he says, more disappointed than angry.

  “You mean Rachel?”

  “No, I just...” He trails off, not bothered to explain it. Takes a drag instead. Something occurs to him. “Also, how do you have time to notice a secretive affair between my son and my wife’s maid, and you don’t notice a fucking genocide taking place?”

  “It wasn’t a genocide,” God corrects him. “All the women and children are still alive.”

  “Well, what would you call it?”

  “I don’t know... It’s like a genocide, but based entirely on gender.” God thinks. “Genocide, gender, genocide, gender.” Finally, he shakes his head, not seeing the obvious pun. “I’ll come up with something.”

  *

  That night, Sim wakes to find himself surrounded by women.

  This isn’t altogether unexpected. He went to bed with several of the Canaanite women he widowed the previous night, and took into captivity the previous morning.

  He did this while somehow compartmentalising the fact that he had punished his sister for a consensual version of the same thing.

  But the women he finds himself surrounded by aren’t the women he went to bed with.

  Well, they’re not the only women.

  The Canaanite widows are huddled off in the corner of the tent, watching him. Their faces are streaked with tears and they're holding each other – traumatised, terrified. The women directly around him are more familiar.

  Leah.

  Rachel.

  Billie.

  Zillie.

  Dinah.

  Sim goes to get up, but finds himself tied by wrist and ankle to the bed. Immediately, panic floods his system. He tugs on the ropes, but it’s no good. He’s pinned.

  Billie and Zillie are standing on either side of him (at three and nine), Leah and Rachel are at five and seven (both holding torches), and Dinah is at six.

  All five are staring down at him, not moving. Firelight dancing across their faces.

  Before he can speak, Leah nods to the maids.

  Billie and Zillie comply, crouching down beside Sim.

  “Wait...” he says, panicking, pressing himself into the bed. “Wait!”

  But they don’t wait.

  They cover his mouth with their bare hands, while Rachel yanks off the blanket, exposing Sim’s naked body, and Dinah produces a long, gleaming dagger.

  Sim’s eyes go wide. He tries to scream, but his protests are muffled through the hands covering his mouth.

  Dinah steps up onto the bed...

  Sim begins shaking his head, screaming louder. He looks around desperately, but they all just stare back at him with dead eyes.

  Dinah crouches down, dagger in hand...

  If anyone were standing just outside the tent, they would have been able to hear Sim’s muffled scream grow suddenly louder, as Dinah took her revenge.

  GENESIS 36-37

  No Country for Sold Men

  After leaving Shechem, Jake and his family settle in the valley of Hebron. In case you don’t remember, that’s where Abe and Sarah were buried.

  Or...at least Abe was buried there.

  Sarah was decapitated just outside the cave after turning into a zombie. I’m not sure if anyone bothered to re-bury her.

  Anyway...

  The family’s a little divided after what happened at Shechem, and no one is really talking to each other.

  Dinah has detached herself from her brothers almost completely, and will only interact with Leah, Rachel, Billie, Zillie, and – very occasionally – the man formerly known as Jake. Her dad, Izzy.

  Reuben has continued his affair with Billie. So far, Izzy hasn’t accused him of anything.

  Sim has basically taken a vow of silence, so traumatised was he by his recent castration at the hands of Dinah, and Levi has turned to wine to soothe his guilt-ridden conscience.

  The rest of the brothers feel varying degrees of guilt and regret for their part in what is now being referred to as ‘The Incident’, but they’re also drowning in loot and free labour – so it’s hard for them to feel too bad about it.

  The Incident has turned them from a blue-collar, nomadic, tent-dwelling family into an upper-middle class, nomadic, tent-dwelling family.

  Say what you will about sacking, pillaging and enslaving, this scrappy underdog clan now has everything they need and then some.

  Yes, indeed – the Israelites are movin’ on up.

  Life is good.

  Well, except for the slaves, of course.

  But the brothers still need something to fill their time between drunken orgies and waking up hungover the next morning, so they spend their days out tending the flocks – getting some fresh air, sunshine, exercise. Leaving all the really shitty jobs to their servants.

  Not a bad life.

  Anyway, the second-youngest of these brothers – you might remember – is Joseph (Joey, for short). He’s kind of the black sheep of the family. A little soft, a little sensitive. A bit of a smart ass. Not really cut out for a life of manual labour.

  Like Izzy before him, he prefers the indoors – cooking, cleaning, writing a few angsty poems when inspiration strikes. Under Rachel’s guidance, he gets so good at making clothes that he stitches himself a sweet, long-sleeved coat.

  This is what’s commonly misconstrued as the ‘coat of many colors’ or, in the Andrew Lloyd Webber version of the story, the ‘amazing technicolor dreamcoat’.

  At the most, it had some stripes.

  The same phrase that people translated as meaning colorful is now thought to be closer to ‘a coat with long sleeves’ or ‘a long coat with stripes’.

  Kind of a bummer, right?

  Don’t worry – he won’t have it for long.

  And the point of the coat isn’t that it’s colorful, more that it’s unsuitable for work. Joey’s not doing manual labour in this thing – it’s the kind of garment his sister’s late fiancée, the prince, might have worn.

  It’s only there to symbolise his otherness, to foreshadow his journey over the next few episodes.

  But how can a coat be foreshadowing, I hear you ask? Surely, that can only be setting up the most boring narrative of all time.

  Well, you’re wrong about that.

  Coats? Poetry? Andrew Lloyd Webber?

  That’s right.

  Buckle up, baby – this is going to be one bumpy ride.

  One night, Joey has a dream where he and his brothers are out harvesting wheat. They’re binding the sheaves, when all of a sudden, Joey’s sheaf rises so its standing upright.

  All the other sheaves begin moving by themselves, too – the brothers don’t really react to the demon-wheat because it’s a dream, and nothing seems weird in a dream. The sheaves waddle (shuffle?) over to Joey’s sheaf, and then fall down flat.

  Joey interprets this as them bowing down to him, and he tells them as much over breakfast the following morning. After they’ve finished hurling their insults and throwing food at him, they head out to tend the flocks.

  But Joey doesn’t care – because in his mind, he’s the Chosen One.

  God’s giving him these dreams as a way of communicating with him, letting him know that he’s special, that he’s be
tter than his brothers.

  One day, he’s going to rule over all of them. They might be verbally abusing him and throwing shit at him now, but pretty soon, they’ll be begging for his mercy.

  And he’ll pretend to consider it.

  So he starts clearing the table as he normally does, humming to himself, smugly assured of his own destiny. Izzy walks over to him for a little father-son chat.

  “Listen, kid...you gotta cut that shit out.”

  “What?” Joey says.

  “The high and mighty shit. It’s really starting to piss off your brothers.”

  “You’re one to talk.”

  Izzy’s caught off-guard by the comment. “Look, I’ll agree I’m not exactly an expert on what constitutes a healthy brotherhood...but I think it might do you some good to go out with them for a day or two. Learn the value of a proper day’s work.”

  Joey stares at his dad like he’s just suggested they make love right there on the dining table.

  “I work,” Joey says, indignant. “I cook and I clean...”

  “...and you sew and you wash dishes. What’s next? You gonna start shitting out grandkids? You’re a man. Maybe it’s time you started acting like one.”

  “Jesus...I get that you’re, like, a hundred years old, but that’s no excuse for putting me in a box based on my gender.”

  “Christ, not this again...”

  “Yes, this again. It’s not okay for you to assume that because I have balls that I want to break my back doing manual labour. Just because it’s something men have traditionally done, doesn’t mean we have to keep doing it. I thought you of all people would get me – you were an indoor kid, too. You liked to read and write.”

  “Yeah, and then I grew up.”

  “And killed your brother.”

  Izzy fumes. “You son of a bitch...”

  Joey continues cleaning, moving along like he hasn’t just enraged his father. He takes a stack of dishes over to the washing bucket and starts cleaning them. “You wanna hear about the other dream I had?”

  Izzy gives an exasperated sigh. “What makes you think I wanna hear about your dreams, kid?”

  “Nice parenting. I’m gonna tell you anyway, just because I think you’ll find it interesting, and it kind of supports the other dream I had, the first dream. Basically...the sun, the moon, and these eleven stars were bowing down to me.”