Man approached from behind her. He glanced at the red sphere in her hand. “What have you done?”

 

Woman spun around, scarlet juices dripping from her lips. “Oh, Man,” she said as she gestured with it in his direction. “This fruit is wonderful. You should try it.” 

 

He put both his hands out in front of him to force the fruit away. “No, I don’t want to die!”

 

“I didn’t die,” Woman explained. Then she gestured toward me. “The serpent didn’t die when he ate it.”

 

Man looked in my direction, but I had laid flat on the ground pretending once again to be a stupid animal. “The serpent?” He asked skeptically. He shook his head. “How do you know you didn’t die? Do you know what dying feels like? Did the serpent tell you that you didn’t die?” Man waved two fingers on each hand up and down when he said ‘the serpent’ for some reason.

 

Woman shook her head. “You can see with your own eyes,” she told him. “Nothing bad is happening to me and this fruit tastes so good. Just take a bite.” She thrust it into his hand.

 

Man jumped when it made contact with his skin as if the fruit would be the one doing the eating. Juice flowed onto his hands and ran like a river down his wrist, finally dripping from his elbow. “I don’t think…”

 

“Don’t be a sloth,” Woman said, coaxing him to put it in his mouth. “We’re supposed to be in this together. Eat the fruit and then we’ll both be just like God.”

 

“What does that even mean?” He asked in a half whisper.

 

Woman gently put her hands on his so that the two of them were holding the fruit together. “Do you trust me?” She asked, gazing intently into her husband’s eyes.

 

“Of course,” Man responded.

 

Without another word, she guided his hands toward his face. Man’s lips parted as the fruit made contact with them. I watched gleefully as he tore a chunk from the forbidden fruit. His munching played like an angelic symphony to my serpent ears. I even got a good laugh as he spluttered and choked when it got caught in his throat. It was like an internal battle where Man’s own body knew better than his mind what was about to happen. 

 

“Why are you making that wretched noise?” Woman shouted. Man was too busy grasping at his neck to answer. He waved his hands in the air and pointed back at himself. Then he bent over with his palms on his knees. His face looked like a cat with a hairball.

 

I turned my head so they couldn’t see the delighted look on my face. I noticed that we had now been surrounded by animals watching from the edge of the meadow. Birds covered the tree branches. Lions and tigers and bears stood statuesque. An orangutan and a bat hung like ornaments. All God’s creatures stared at the humans with vivid horror.

 

Man was laying on the ground panting, while Woman gawked at him. “Why did you do that?” Woman asked. “Did you not like the fruit?”

 

“It’s not like I was doing it on purpose,” Man responded with frustration. “That fruit hurt my throat and I felt like the inside of my chest was collapsing. I couldn’t do that thing where air goes in and out of your mouth. I never noticed it until that moment.” He paused to take in a deep breath, then puffed it out. “And no, I didn’t like your fruit.”

 

“Well, it’s not my fruit,” Woman told him. “It was the serpent’s fruit. He’s the one that lives in that tree. Or I suppose all the fruit belongs to God.”

 

Man put his right palm up to his face. “It was God’s fruit!” He exclaimed. “We ate God’s fruit!” He stood up and began stomping around in circles.

 

Woman tried to console him. “Look on the bright side. At least we’re not dead.”

 

“You don’t know that!” Her husband shouted. “We’ve never died before. For all we know, it might take days to die.”

 

“You always think you’re right about everything!” She shouted back. “You don’t know what’s going to happen. I feel exactly the same as I did before I ate the fruit. Nothing has changed!”

 

What happened next, I never saw coming. Man moved in her direction like he was about to yell back at her, but he stopped and peered at her curiously. Then, he glanced down at himself and his face seemed to go through a mixture of emotions. 

 

“What?” Woman started looking at herself trying to figure out what he’s thinking. 

 

“We’re naked,” Man responded in a quavering tone. 

 

“Naked? What do you mean ‘naked’?”

 

“Our bodies!” Man was shouting again, but no longer out of anger. “Everyone can see every part of us. We need to cover up!”

 

“Everyone?” Woman exclaimed. “Who’s everyone? We’ve never covered ourselves before. How do we do that?”

 

I had to go back into my tree at this point. I didn’t want the idiot humans to hear me laughing at them. Man proceeded to drag his wife back toward the trees. He pushed past a gorilla that was scratching its own head at their strange behavior. The two of them started grabbing leaves from the trees and bushes comparing sizes. Finally, they settled on leaves from a fig tree and yanked some vines down as well. They desperately tried to tie the leaf stems to the vines, then the vines on each other. 

 

I’m honestly not sure what led to this idea, but I suppose that’s because I’m not human. No living being in history ever felt like it had to cover itself up with something else. Now, God’s two perfect little creations were so confused because He didn’t build them to be able to handle the knowledge of good and evil with their tiny minds.

 

By the time they were done, the two of them looked completely ridiculous. Man had sewn enough leaves together to cover the front of his waist. However, when Woman tried to do the same, he insisted that she needed more leaves. In the end, the front of her body was a patchwork of leaves and vines. She ultimately made him stop when he tried to use one to cover her mouth because he said she complained too much. 

 

I began to imagine the centuries of fun I would have with my two new plebeian toys when the atmosphere changed. The breeze picked up and the animals dispersed into the forest. Man and Woman hid feebly behind a couple large trees. I decided to make my way toward them in order to continue the show, eventually making myself comfortable behind some bushes they hadn’t ravaged for clothing materials.

 

“Man?” God’s voice echoed through the garden. “Where are you?”

 

“Don’t answer,” Woman whispered as she clenched Man’s arm. “Maybe He’ll go away if we stay hidden.”

 

“I can’t just not answer,” Man hissed. “Father will find us eventually and then what will happen?” He peered out from behind the tree.

 

“I heard You in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked; so, I hid.” When Man finished his announcement, he ducked back behind the tree.

 

“Who told you that you were naked?” God’s voice thundered. “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

 

Man’s face passed through multiple emotions at this question. He looked close to tears for a moment before he seemed to land on a determined anger. “The woman you put here with me,” he called out, not even bothering to move out of his hiding place this time, “she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

 

“What?!” Woman exclaimed. Her outrage at Man’s betrayal only lasted for a second before she realized that her outburst had announced her location. 

 

“What is this you have done?”

 

If you’ve never heard a snake burst out into laughter, the sound that came out of me at this point was somewhere between a hiss and a sneeze. If I had known that it would be this easy to bring down God’s precious children and make everything He built completely worthless, I would have started with this before my rebellion. Seeing God’s utter failure here on Earth has got to convince the rest of God’s faithful angels to follow me.

 

“The serpent deceived me, and I ate!” 

 

Crap! Okay, maybe God will think she’s just as crazy as Man did. No other angel or demon has ever inhabited an animal before. I’ll just stay right here and pretend to be a dumb snake and God won’t notice me.

 

Woman was crying now. Man was looking around confused as usual. The breeze had evolved into a strong wind. Leaves were whipping off the trees like razors. There was an electricity in the air that had never been felt on Earth since it was created.

 

“Serpent?” God’s voice came to me as a condemning whisper. Clearly, I was not getting out of this.

 

“What?” I said with my innocent snake eyes. “I was just hanging out and the Woman tried to talk to me. Is it a crime for me to talk to Your humans now? It’s not my fault she ate Your fruit.” 

 

“You can talk!” Man yelled at me.

 

“I told you!” Woman yelled at Man.

 

Man looked sheepish. “I thought you just had a dream, like that time you told me you saw the dancing mushrooms. How was I supposed to know?”

 

“I can tell the difference between what’s real and a dream,” Woman growled at him. “If I tell you that I met a talking snake, then I met a talking snake!”

 

“Enough!” God’s voice silenced their bickering. “You leave Me no choice. This is going to hurt Me more than it will hurt you.”

 

“Serpent,” God addressed me, “because you have done this, you are cursed more than all animals, domestic and wild. You will crawl on your belly, groveling in the dust as long as you live.”

 

“That seems harsh,” I responded. “All I did was socialize with Your creation. Isn’t that what You made me to do? Personally, I feel like I’ve been punished enough.”

 

“And,” God continued, “I will cause hostility between you and the Woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”

 

Woman squinted her eyes and stuck her tongue out at me as if to confirm that the hostility had started. I returned the gesture to indicate that I would be watching out for her offspring and his heel. Afterwards, I realized that I probably just looked like a snake doing what a snake does and she most likely didn’t understand my intentions.

 

“Woman,” God shifted His attention, “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And your desire shall be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

 

Woman’s mouth dropped open. She glanced toward Man who was now grinning. “Don’t smile at that.” She told him.

 

“Can you explain some of that?” She asked God. “I’ve never heard the words pregnancy or birth.”

 

“You’ll understand soon enough,” God told her.

 

“Man,” God continued, “since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains. By the sweat of your brow, you will have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.”

 

Man thought for a minute. Then, he raised his hand above his head. “What’s a struggle?”