Chapter 11
Gendlebleth stood alone in a field surrounded by high grass and purple and blue and red and white and yellow wildflowers. Up next to his foot hopped a bunny rabbit. Gendlebleth stooped down and picked the bunny up by the nape of its neck and looked at it in the eye. As he stared into the face of the bunny, and the bunny stared back into his eyes, the corners of his lips were raised into a smile; pure joy. His hand next closed around the bunny’s neck, and he brought its body down against a large boulder repeatedly: WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! Down came the body of the rabbit in his hand no less than two dozen times against the rock when finally he stopped.
The bloody, broken body of the small animal hung limp in his hand; half of its body missing meat and skin and bone dripping the liquid still barely left in its body. As he held it up by the neck to look into its eyes, it was the dead, glazed visage of Abel staring back at him.
Gendlebleth awoke out of his nightmare in a cold sweat. He recalled how the meeting had gone earlier that night. After entering the ring of the other angels, Luciferous had come straight to him and immediately embraced him tightly as Gendlebleth wept openly and freely in his arms. He spoke to the entire group as he spoke to his weeping friend, “They have free choice. No more than we could tell our creator what It cannot do, so too can we not tell them what they cannot do. And likewise, we must be cautious of what we teach them is in their capacity. It isn’t your fault Gendlebleth, you didn’t know that such a thing had never occurred to him before, and more than that, that he would act upon it.”
Hearing the words of his friend “you didn’t know,” Gendlebleth felt compelled to pull away, run to the edge of the hill, and begin vomiting. Luciferous looked on after his friend with sympathy before turning back to address the rest of the group.
As all around the circle nodded gravely and sadly while Luciferous spoke, Gendlebleth could be heard in the background weeping between the heaves of undigested bits pushing their way up through his esophagus.
. . .
As Cain left the body of his brother, he reflected with pride that he had employed his brother’s technique so well he had apparently scarcely felt any pain as his life quickly flowed from his body. Cain felt something suddenly very heavy and hollow taking up a great deal of room in the middle of his chest, but he prided himself on his work well done, and could not imagine what the meaning of this feeling was as he walked home to dinner.
Shortly after sitting on the ground where they took their supper together, Adam spoke to his son, “Where is your brother Abel?”
Cain looked up at his father, the feeling in his stomach becoming heavier as quickly, nervously, he tried to dodge the question put forth to him, “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”
“Are you your brother’s keeper? What an odd thing to say.” Adams face contorted as he strove to suss out what his son’s statement could possibly mean. “The two of you are practically inseparable. I know the two of you have places you go alone, but when have the two of you ever not been present for the grace of the sustenance we receive from That Which Created us simultaneously? If we are very fortunate, your brother brings us the life of an animal that does not understand choosing food, and you bring with you the gifts of the soil, and we eat together. Your mother is preparing the lamb stew now from the work of both your hands and will be more curious, even than I, when she does not see your brother present. You have no knowledge even of where your brother might be?”
Looking into his father’s eyes, Cain could not bear to lie, the pain of weight and emptiness was growing within him as he heard each word of his father spoken. His internal burden seemed to be bursting through him as he spoke the truth lest the pain tear his flesh asunder. Barely audibly he murmured pathetically “Abel won’t be coming to dinner Father. Abel will never take dinner with us again.”
And now the concern began to fill his father’s face as Adam felt a pit begin in his own stomach, “What do you mean son?”
“I thought that if you did not have him to be proud of for the meat he brought you, perhaps you would be proud to have my wheat alone since there would be nothing else to compare it to.”
A bit louder he spoke, “What do you mean, son?”
“I took his life that I’d have no worry as to my own, Father.”
“No worry to your own life? Took his life? What have you done? You could not have killed your brother?”
“I thought that if I worked even harder, planted more crops, did more work creating our house that –“
“You killed your brother?”
“I’m prepared to take over his duties, and –“
“YOU KILLED YOUR BROTHER?” As Adam shouted his question with the boiling blood of all his rage, Eve appeared at the door of the dwelling carrying in her hands the pot of lamb stew she had been preparing for their supper.
Cain’s eye flew to those of his mother. Adam’s head turned abruptly toward his wife almost as though his neck could act like an owl’s. Eve stared deeply into the eyes of her son, then looked at Adam’s, then turned again back to her son’s face. Back and forth between them she looked as the pot in her hands began to rattle in her increasingly unsteady grasp. Finally the finality of the realization was allowed by her to be perceived, and as the pot fell to the floor, the contents spilling out to cover much of the ground of their dwelling, a shriek of pure terror, high pitched, shrill and loud, tore from out of her throat, slicing open the night as though only anguish had ever existed for her and she wished to fill the world singularly with the pain she now felt.
The heavy emptiness that Cain felt in his stomach now filled with that sound of his mother wailing her perfect misery to all of God’s creation as though he were soaking up every decibel like a sponge directly into that hole left when he removed his brother from his life. When, minutes latter, her one, long breath did stop, and Eve fell to her knees, her inhalation a sob gasping automatically to keep her alive through the tears that began to fall, the sound of all that she had emptied through her throat still filled the void that had formed so much weight in the center of Cain. He stood up and stepped toward his mother to comfort her, and as he did, felt a hand grasp the back of his covering by the neck and pull him outside sharply.
He practically flew out the door from the gesture of his father’s adrenalin-filled arm. Cain’s head landed against a rock hard before Adam picked Cain up next by the front of his covering, by the neck, and held his son’s face up to his own, “Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth. I cast you from this place that you will never return!”
Horror filled Cain’s face as he cried out up toward the gaze of his father, “My punishment is greater than I can bear! Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and I long that my mother may give birth that another shall grow quickly, meet me, and kill me.”
“Not so!” Adam spat on the ground, “Your mother did not suffer the pain of your creation and your brother’s that another child of ours would turn its face as well from The Creator Of Life Infinite! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a seven fold vengeance.” And the gash in Cain’s head where his head had struck the rock moments ago began to bleed.
. . .
As her wail filled the night sky, the ears of all the angels were filled with the feeling of their hearts sinking to hear the pain of the human woman suffering more greatly than they ever could conceive of being merely separate from the other halves of their selves. Antagnous held Casarta close to her as she heard the pain of the woman losing her children whose labor she suffered that they would know the fullness of life.
Through the heaves of his stomach, and his tears, her sound penetrated deeply into Gendlebleth’s heart where it filtered to a place just beneath it, and stayed even after the sound of the beginning of her profound misery had ceased.
After his vomiting and tears had stopped, and he had been carried back to his tent to sleep, her suffering’s sound still filled him as he continued to weep himself into an exhaustion, and finally slumber.
When he awoke later in the darkness, he could not again find his way to further nightmares as he awaited the rising of the sun. He prayed fervently that a night would come when again his body would follow naturally to its proper place in the mind of the night without fear of what torture his own actions would reflect through the feelings of his existence.
. . .
In Its dwelling, the Lord heard the proclamation of Cain’s father, and saw that it was good.
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