I, Lucifer: Finally, the Other Side of the Story by Glen Duncan

soul's irresistibility. Bit of a stretch. My apologies. Gunn's
penchant for oily lechery and oilier lyricism infecting me in
equal measures. That fraud. How did women stand him?)
    It wasn't love at first sight. They ran into each other one
morning in a sunny clearing in the forest. A few moments of
stunned silence. `Glockenspiel,' Adam pronounced, thinking
(but with terrible doubt) he'd found another animal in search
of a name. When Eve approached him, proffering a handful
of elderberries, he threw a stick at her and ran away.
    They didn't see each other again for quite some time. It
was no skin off Eve's nose - but Adam couldn't get her out of his head. It wasn't desire (micturition aside, the Edenic
Johnson was as useful as a burst balloon); it was anxiety. No
other animal had ever (a) offered him elderberries (or anything else), or (b) looked so ... so related to him. Not even
the orangs, of whom he was especially fond. The memory of
her tormented him in the weeks and months that followed -
the dark eyes and long eyelashes, the swollen, berry-stained
mouth, the in ornprelimsihle arrangement between her legs;
most of all the shocking fearlessness, the composure of the
fruit-offering, as if he - he, Adam - was a beast to he propitiated or gulled. (Yes, girls, I know: good definition ol'a man.)
He walked in the garden and called on God for reassurance,
but God chose inscrutability. (He did that, from time to
time, Adam had noticed. Until now he hadn't questioned it.)
His unease grew. He became obsessed with the idea that
she'd already named the animals and that his own hardthought-out monikers were redundant. Obsessed, too, with
the notion that all those times God had withdrawn into
silence He had in fact been with . . . with her, and this
whole concept of his, Adani's sovereignty was nothing but
a ... but surely that wasn't possible', Surely he, Adam, was
God's first ...

    He saw her twice more. Once from a distance - he stood
at the top of a valley looking down to the river hundreds of
feet below, where, having discovered that wood floated, Eve
sat straight-backed astride three or four vined-together
saplings she'd uprooted, drifting gently on the current - and
once at unsettling proximity, when, having slept late before
emerging from a cataract-curtained cave he saw her fresh
from a dip, supine on a large flat stone, eyes closed, sunlight
resting on pubes and eyelashes like tiny spirits. He considered
throwing a rock at her, but bottled out and slunk away.
    The anxiety - who the /iick? - worsened. He went off his food (she'd spoiled elderberries for him for good) and developed a rash on his ankle. It was a frustrating time for me. I
couldn't believe he couldn't hear nay suggestion that he sneak
up on her while she was asleep and bash her head in. I still
think what a coup that would have been: Murder in Eden -
but it was no good. An appalling waste of paranoia, that
period of Adam's angst. I've got subsequent genocide started
with less. I tried Eve, too, needless to say. Same deal. Adam
lost weight and invented nailbiting. Finally, God took a hand.
(Why `finally'? What had He been waiting for?) One night
He caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep. During this sleep
He did three things. First, He brought Eve in a trance to
where Adam lay and caused her to fall into a deep sleep by the
man's side. Second, He erased from both their minds all
memory of each other. Third, He gave Adam a dream (the
first dream, ever, and one which Adam would later remember
as a real event) in which he asked God for an help meet and
in which God delivered by forming Eve out of Adam's rib.

    You know what I did? I spent the entire night hovering
over Eve whispering: `Rubbish. Don't believe it. It's a story.
You're being brainwashed. It's lies, lies, lies.' I concentrated all
my energy, every ounce of angelic clout, on that fine filament of her, that faint strand I'd sensed before; I addressed