A True Story About Adam and Eve

This story happened a very long time ago, and it begins like this: Adam was out naming the animals, and Eve was making a stew of the newly named Orangutang for dinner, when there comes from a wee way off, the squaling of an infant. So of course Eve, being a curious sort of woman, goes to investigate.

She looks in trees and under trees, but find the infant at last nestled in the bed of flowers she planted last autumn. It's a little boy, naked as Adam - or at least Adam before that nasty business with the serpent and the fig leaves - and she picks him up to croon at. He's a handsome young boy, and Eve is proud of her find, so she calls out, "Adam! Adam, I've found a wee bairn!"

Except of course she wasn't speaking English - or even Hebrew, because this was back before the tower of Babel, and they were speaking God's language, which was what everyone spoke back then, including the child. But that comes later.

Adam comes running, and peers at the child in Eve's arms. "Why, he's a bonny lad," he says. "I'll have to think of a good name for him."

The child was quiet now he was in Eve's arms, and he looked around at everything in a way that was beginning to unnerve her. So she bounced him a bit and said, "Ah, but we cannae be feeding him stew now." And so she took the child to her breast thinking that if God had given her a child, of course she would have milk. Except God hadn't given her the child, and she let out a scream when he bit her hard.

Adam laughed at that, so she said, "Ach, well, you have him."

So Adam took the boy and showed him all the animals, and the boy kept watching with his uncanny blue eyes.

That evening, when Adam and Eve should have been asleep, Iblis, who was a demon, came to speak to the child, who was also a demon, albeit a rather younger one.

"And how are ye?" Iblis said.

"Just braw, thanks," the baby replied, and Iblis left with a contented nod of the head. And Eve, who hadn't been able to get to sleep for the pain the baby's teeth had left - and surely it was too young for teeth.

That morning, after a sleepless night, Eve woke Adam and told him what she'd heard. Adam frowned. "It must be a demon baby," he said. "We'll 'ave to kill it."

And they were both sorry, because it was such a handsome baby, but Adam drowned it anyway, and he dug a wee hole for the corpse, and they thought that was the end of it.

But that night again, Eve couldn't sleep, and again she saw the demon Iblis come, and though they'd made the grave a fair way away, she could hear the demon speaking again.

"And how are ye?" it said again, and then she saw the earth shake and the baby popped up.

"Just braw, thanks," it said.

And so when Adam and Eve got up that morning the baby was waiting for them, staring them.

"Maybe it will just go away," Adam whispered to Eve. Eve shook her head. She was already sick of it, and the lack of sleep was fringing her nerves. So she took the baby and dumped it on the fire, till it had burnt away to nought but a pile of ashes. No corpse to come back to life that way, she thought, and that night she actually slept.

But she woke again with the moon high above her and Iblis speaking over the fire: "And how are ye?"

It couldn't possibly reply, she thought, but then she heard that eerie voice come again: "Just braw, thanks."

"Right, that's it," Adam said in the morning, when the demon-baby was grinning at them from the ashes of the fire, alive and well, if such a thing could be described by either term. "It cannnae possibly come back to life if we eat it."

So Adam whacked it over the head with a rock, and Eve slow-roasted it, so in the evening they had roast demon-baby with new potatoes and broccoli for dinner, all smothered in a delicious demon-baby sauce. And they both agreed it was the best meal they'd ever had. But they were rather full at the end of it it, and Eve was awake yet again the following night with indigestion.

She was not really surprised when Iblis came back, stood over her and Adam, and asked solemnly, "And how are ye?"

She was more surprised though, when she heard the voice reply, "Just braw, thanks, and very comfortable."

And the demon Iblis smiled and left, for this had been its plan all along. And that's the reason that even today, everybody has something devilish inside them.