Portal Magazine
              
                                                  Volume 3 Issue 7
                                                     August 29th 2010           

Current Issue
Vol. 3 Iss. 7
Aug. 29th

Stevats' Chronicle

Issue Seven: CCSYC :  ADAM : Symptom

ADAM - By: Ryan Barylski

         It was late or early depending on how you viewed the hours of the day as they passed by. For Adam it was of no consequence. Adam didn't sleep, he didn't need to, Adam didn't work, he had more money in more places than anyone would guess at, Adam couldn't become addicted to anything, he couldn't get high or drunk, never had he been allowed to have a hang over, never had he been allowed a moments respite from being completely and soberly aware that he was alive. Adam didn't need to eat, he only did because he liked the taste of food. Adam couldn't die, or to put it correctly, God wouldn't allow Adam to die, so he had no worries about anything that the mortality of the rest of us might have when it comes to health.

Throughout recorded history Adam had lived everywhere, had tried everything, knew answers to things that historians and archeologists spent their entire lifetimes trying to figure out. Adam had been here from the start, or what the Bible said was the start. Adam knew better, but if he told the truth of what had happened in that garden he would be locked up in an insane asylum until he was supposed to die. Someone would notice, after a decade or so that he wasn't aging, after two decades they would start asking questions, after three they would start poking and prodding, after four the preachers, the sick, the dying, the curious would start showing up and treating him like a zoo animal.

That was what happened to him then, before people had real science and 24 hour mass media that just needed a story like his that they could play over and over to the rapt masses. That was before being famous, no matter what for, was more important than any good you might do here on this planet. Even before all this he didn't want to be known, he could only shudder whenever the idea that he might be caught again, forced to endure endless life in this new world where you could be famous for nothing, something as inconsequential as not being able to die, came over him.

Adam flipped the piece of chicken he was cooking and added some more sweet and sour sauce to the pan. He took the pineapple chunks that he had cut up earlier and scraped them off the wooden cutting board into the pan to simmer with the sauce and add that flavor that he loved so much to the chicken. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, inhaling the aroma, listening to the food and sauce sizzle, and felt it calm his nerves as it always did.

He heard a slight, "tick," just above the noise of the sizzle and opened his eyes, glancing at the clock hanging above the stove. It was a clock that had no business being in his house, he had some fine things here, paintings worth more than half the houses on his block combined, plates and cutlery that he ate with every night that museums and collectors would have sold certain limbs to place behind glass and charge people who thought they knew why these things were so priceless to look at. He had furniture that people in the history books full of lies that we give to our children in the public education systems, had farted on, spilled food and drink all over, and at least a few times been fucked on.

Adam stared at the clock that had no business being in the house, a three dollar Mickey Mouse clock that the arms of the mouse told the time with, until its minute arm ticked again and then pulled a plate and wine glass down from the cupboard. He leaned down and opened a cupboard next to the electric stove and pulled out one of his finer bottles of port. Adam pulled out the cork, sniffed it just because he had always liked the smell of port, then poured a little on the chicken to sweeten the flavor further. He used a pair of tongs that he had had for longer than he could remember, and God made sure that his memory was almost perfect so that was saying something, to put the chicken and pineapple on the plate, poured himself a full glass of the port and, satisfied that everything was in place for him to have one of his rare, but often perfect meals, turned off the stove.

" JESUS CHRIST!" Adam yelled as he turned towards his mahogany kitchen table while simultaneously spilling the contents of the plate and wine glass all over his hardwood kitchen floor.

" I'll take that has a hello," Christ said, sitting with his hands folded in front of him at the opposite end of the table.

Adam's heart was racing, cold sweat poured from the pours of his skin, he felt fear for the first time in thousands of years. No, it wasn't the first time he had felt fear, it was the first time that he had felt the fear that the end of your life was imminent. The type of fear that the rest of the mere mortals around him felt all the time, the type of fear that he hated God for making them feel, the type of fear that he pitied them for having to go through whatever life they had here with.

" I'm just here to talk," Christ said and opened his hands, showing Adam his palms, to show him that he meant no harm.

" Yeah, that's pretty much all you did the last time you were here if my memory, and that book they wrote about you, are correct," Adam had developed a biting wit being on earth this long and sometimes the sarcasm came out without him even thinking about the words before they left his mouth.

" Watch yourself," Christ said, with a trace of almighty anger in his tone.

Adam knew better than to push his luck any further. Everyone on earth now had the ability to know that the Bible couldn't be the literal translation of Christ's words. What the people who used this knowledge didn't know was that he was the first hippie: peace, love, understanding, completely non judgmental about how you lived your life as long as you were helping your fellow man, he took that do unto others as you wish done unto you shit to heart and really meant it. The other thing they didn't know was that he wasn't only angry once, no Christ had inherited his dad's temper and while he preached these things, if you didn't follow them, if you were selfish, hurt others, judged everyone around you, he had no problem calling down the wrath of his father and beating his Gospel into your face until you spent the rest of your life trying to gum your food to a soft enough state to swallow.

" I hope you're just here to talk to me," Adam said, taking the sarcasm out of his tone and replacing it with wryness, " looking like that the people in this neighborhood will call homeland security the minute they see you."

" I think they're a little more understanding than you give them credit for," Christ said as he once folded his dark skinned hands together in front of him.

" You mean you don't know for sure if they're more understanding than you give them credit for, they would be disappointed to hear that," Adam said knowing that he was pushing his luck but again, the words left his mouth without him really thinking about it. That was the funny thing about not being able to die. You could say whatever you wanted to whoever you wanted and you didn't have to worry about the consequences because you were cursed to heal instantly no matter what the injury, problem was when you got around somebody like say, Jesus Christ, who could hurt you it was pretty impossible to all of the sudden develop some sort of self control.

Christ just let out a long, tired sounding sigh and bowed his head. Adam felt guilty instantly at taking advantage of Christ's compassion towards the human plight. Adam had known since the man first walked this earth two thousand years ago that while he didn't totally understand the human condition, how could he knowing he was the son of God, he had a hell of a lot better idea than his pissed off father or that ghost that no one ever really knew what exactly it was up to.

" I know all the things that my Father and the Holy Ghost know, I know the minds of mortal men, I know the minds of immortal men, I know that you're about to be tempted more than you ever have before and I'm here to counsel against it," Adam listened as the voice of the almighty gained a gravity that only the voice of the almighty could.

The fear that Adam felt washed over him in an even more intense wave. It was more intense this time because the thought that Christ would take time out of his busy schedule of running, at the very least the planet earth, to warn Adam made him sick to his stomach for the first time since God had cursed him with life unending. Adam fixed Christ with a hard stare, he had hung around Christ for a bit when he was here last, he didn't stay until the end because Christ had told him to leave, that he couldn't forgive him because Adam and Eve's sin was something only his father could deliver them from. He recognized the look on Christ's face though, the same one that he had seen whenever he was about to ask the disciples to do something that would lead to their doom, or force them to be further outcasts than they already were in the name of faith.

" You want something?" Adam asked in a shocked tone. When Christ had been here previous he would never had even cried to the Mother Mary in his want for breast milk as a swaddling, but now he was sitting across from Adam with a want about to pass his lips. A favor about to be asked of one cursed by his Father from the lips of the son. In essence, Adam knew, God himself was about to owe him one.

" I don't want anything more than what you've already....given," Christ said choosing his words carefully.

Adam caught the slight hesitation and the careful way in which Christ had phrased his sentence, Adam was again, shocked. The last time he had been around Christ he liked him because he was very straight forward, blunt almost to the point of rudeness, that's why the people who actually wrote the Gospel added some phrases and deleted others, Christ's message was to simple, no human would believe that an all knowing, all seeing, God who had created everything, could possibly be so straight forward. No for fucked up mankind to believe something it had to mean someone was wrong, someone was right, and the people who were wrong, deserved to be outcast and killed, then they would burn in hell for eternity, the people who were right got to bask in God's glory forever.

" Playing the politician, parsing words and what not, never seemed to suit you or your father, I always thought that was the ghosts job," Adam knew he was pushing his luck again with his language and tone, but he was doing it intentionally now. He didn't like this new Christ, he liked the Christ had stood so strongly on principle alone in his last life that he was willing to be nailed to a cross for it.

" My father worked hard to change and through me he did so," Christ said and again his voice gained the power of the almighty.

Adam closed his eyes hoping that Christ would disappear. He hoped he was insane and that this wasn't happening. People thought eternal life was so great, or thought they knew the reasons why it would be terrible. They knew jack shit.

Eternal life is exactly what it means, eternal. A meteor hits the earth and all life as we know it is destroyed, you live, pandemic strikes taking out all of mankind leaving only mutants from some sci fi movie roaming the earth, you live, when the sun expands and swallows the earth a few billion years from now, you live through it, when the sun explodes and then collapses back in upon itself forming an enormous black hole, you get sucked into it. You are eternal. You get to experience the terror that only a few mere mortals have the capacity to experience in their bravest moments.

Adam opened his eyes and the dark skinned Son of God was still sitting across from him, staring at him, not saying anything, not preaching, not judging with the power of the almighty, just staring with what appeared to Adam to be a questioning look. Adam returned his gaze levelly, he wasn't scared anymore, he wasn't even curious as to what Christ was talking about, he was just tired. He hadn't slept since man first appeared, he had been wide awake and witness to it all, 24 hours a day, millennia after millennia he was awake and aware but finally, for the first time since before he was cursed he felt like he really could go to sleep despite his curse.

" You're not really tired," Christ said with the most soothing, even tone that Adam had ever heard. Adam had forgotten just how comforting that voice could be.

" It's your brain trying to escape what your soul knows is coming your way tonight, you won't be able to, you know this, so don't let it distract you," Christ continued with the same perfectly even keeled voice.

" Leave," Adam said rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands. He wanted this to be over now, clean up the mess he had made on the floor behind him, cook his food all over again, and finally eat the meal that he had been so looking forward to.

" Eve said no, we talked before she met..."

" I don't care what Eve did," Adam said, interrupting Christ like he was an annoying neighbor who had crossed a conversational boundary he had no right to cross.

" If I wanted what I know he's offering," Adam continued as he folded his hands in front of him, then let the anger that was welling up inside of him, filter into his eyes and voice, " I could have it without him. If I wanted fame, money, power I'm sure I could have had it, but eventually it would turn into me being a freak show puppet. You know I don't want what he's offering, what I want only you and your dad can give me, so if your not here to offer it to me, or tell me how to go about getting it, then I would ask you kindly to get the fuck out of my house."

Christ stared at Adam, sadness, understanding, a slight hint of anger, sympathy, empathy, all of these things played across Christ's face, and then he was gone. Adam waited for him to reappear, but the seat that the Son of God had been sitting in remained empty. Adam had a security system, cameras in all the downstairs rooms, he wondered if they had caught this conversation, if he could prove that it had been authentic, prove it because he wondered just how much he could get on Ebay for the chair that the Son of God had sat in.

Adam stood up and opened the cupboard door below his sink that contained his garbage can. He pulled out the can, which since he rarely ate or drank, wasn't filled with much except some junk mail that he couldn't recycle and an odd assortment of things that he picked up here and there to throw out so that the garbage man and his neighbors would only comment on his small amount of garbage, not his complete lack of.

© Ryan Barylski 2008- All Rights Reserved