Death in the Garden of Eden

Death sat curled up in a large swinging wicker chair in the long shuttered Garden of Eden. The warm breeze smelled of plumeria. A colorful macaw bobbed on a branch of that famous tree. The snake near the tree knew who the beautiful woman was, and recoiled from her, even though she really had no jurisdiction over the animal kingdom. Still the snake stayed his distance.

A bright green frog peeked up from under a leaf. The rest of nature’s creatures crowded around in a careless exhalation of extraordinary beauty. Death went there sometimes to think things through. She loved the natural habitat and the irony: the Garden of Eden had actually been the beginning of the end: the birthplace of man’s mortality. Had those two humans (symbolic or not) never been “human” by succumbing to temptation, they would not have known death or Death, either one. The latter smiled at the irony.

Did Adam and Eve not know these words at the time:  “… and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…”?  Death decided they didn’t know or chose not to heed the words because they were lead into, and they were not delivered from. The forbidden fruit was the temptation on that fateful day.  Today, the Deathlist is the forbidden fruit. It’s man’s quest to know all there is to know. And this knowledge, this Deathlist, has been as nasty and unforgiving as the sin in the Garden of Eden. And as before, they’re paying for it.

“But perhaps we can still fix it,” Death said to those creatures around her. “The Deathlist that is. Adam and Eve’s little slip is way too far gone. But the Deathlist… maybe yes.”

Death arose from her chair, nodded to the pretty frog and raised an eyebrow in the snake’s direction. He flinched. Death chuckled, pleased with herself, and left.

© Kathryn Atkins 2016