Homesick
by Alasdair McPherson
Genre: Humour
Swearwords: Some strong ones.
Description: Genesis, but not as we know it.
_____________________________________________________________________
Judging from what I have learned since, I was about ten when I noticed that I was lonely. It was lovely in the garden and I was still having fun with all the animals but none of them talked. Father popped up from time to time to ask how I was getting on but he just made a note of what I said. Nothing I said surprised him so there was no speculation in our conversations: I noticed something different in the garden that he already knew about. Nothing I said made him raise an eyebrow.
“A lamb died yesterday. It fell into a pond, kicked about a bit and then went quiet. When I got it out it had stopped breathing.”
“Interesting. Could you have pulled it out sooner?”
“I suppose so. In fact, I would have run to help if I had known what would happen.”
“Fascinating! Well done, my boy.”
“Then last night a jackal came into the garden and took the dead lamb away.”
“Did you see what it did with the lamb?”
He wandered off at that point. I made up my mind that next time something died I would follow the jackal to see what it did with the body. I would like to have talked the idea over with someone because I was a bit afraid. I was thinking of doing something that wasn’t necessary for my survival. I couldn’t chat about things like that with Father.
So I realised that I was lonely. I needed someone like me to be my pal, my buddy. When I told Father, he really looked at me for the first time.
“That makes sense, Adam. I should have thought of it for myself. I’m astonished that you’ve had an idea that I didn’t anticipate. I need to think about that. In the meantime, I’ll give you a little playmate.”
The next morning I woke up with a pain in my ribs as bad as the time I was kicked by a donkey when we were fooling around and wrestling. I went down to the pool to look at my reflection to see if there was a bruise but all there was is a thin red line on my side.
I was walking back to get a banana for breakfast when I met Father holding the hand of another being quite like me. He introduced the creature as ‘a woman’ who had to be called ‘her’ or ‘she’.
“This is Eve,” Father told me, letting go of her hand and pushing her towards me.
She is about my age, I suppose, and she is quite friendly; in fact, she can be a bit too friendly at times. She follows me about always asking questions. I liked the attention at first because I knew almost as much more than her as Father did me. The trouble is that she is a quick learner so I lost my superiority quite soon. From then on she still asked questions but she would argue about the answers I gave. She even asked questions of Father and argued with him, a thing I had never dared to do. He would laugh most of the time but I sometimes heard him mumbling to himself:
“This is remarkable. I really think they could be capable of free will. Who would have thought when I moulded that clay?”
Once Eve settled down, we began egging each other on. I had always picked fruit that was at eye level but she urged me to climb up the trees.
“What’s the point? It’s still just a cherry when all is said and done. Let the birds have the high fruit, why don’t you?”
“If you really liked me, you would get that big cherry right near the top of the tree.”
“Look, here’s two cherries right beside my hand that make more than that one fruit at the top of the tree.”
“It’s not the same, though. I want the big one. Give the two little ones to the birds if you like them so much!”
Father told me that this was an argument. He was overjoyed that Eve and I had them. After an argument we would leave each other alone for a while. We had our own special friends amongst the other animals in the garden. After a while we would get together again; none of the others talked so we only had each other to speak to. Even an argument was better than not talking at all.
She was with me when I followed a jackal out to the edge of the garden carrying a dead kid in its mouth. It was dark so we didn’t see very much but there was a lot of snarling. The next morning we ventured out of the garden to look at the place the jackal had gone with the kid. The ground round about was churned up and there were traces of blood – we even found a bone with all the flesh eaten off it.
“Did you know about this, Adam?” It was obvious that the jackal and his mates had eaten the kid but I needed time to think, so I challenged her to race back into the garden instead of answering.
“C’mon, Adam, if you know what’s going on, tell me.”
You only have to look at the teeth to work out that some animals are designed to eat grass and shrubs while others like the lion and the jackal are equipped to rip apart flesh. I wondered if they only ate dead animals. I also wondered what flesh would taste like – I love fruit and vegetables, don’t get me wrong, but I did wonder about eating flesh.
Some time after this, Eve drew my attention to rather odd behaviour amongst the flocks and herds. Most of the time they quietly munch grass but then there comes a season when they become restless. The rams in particular become very excited, fighting with each other by banging their heads together. Then they climb on the back of the ewes and put their piddlers into them.
Now I had noticed right from the start that Eve and I were slightly different but I had given it very little thought since Father had explained that she was a ‘woman’. Recently she had grown lumps on her chest and we had grown hairs round the bits that were different. It almost seemed that the hair was trying to draw our attention to the area.
Watching the rams caused a change that almost frightened me to death. My piddler is soft and small, dangling at the top of my thighs. Now it grew fatter and began to point upwards. Eve was almost as worried as I was; she put her hand on it to try to force it back down where it belongs. Her hand moved on it and I experienced the most pleasant sensations centred on my groin but pervading every part of my being.
“What can I do, Adam? I was trying to make it go down but it seems to be getting bigger.”
“Just keep rubbing it Eve.”
When I explained what I was feeling she wondered if rubbing her piddler would feel nice so we tried it with equal success. We found that the feelings intensified at times so we spent days doing nothing but finding out how to get the most pleasure. It was Eve who wondered if I could do to her what the rams did to the ewes. Some of the madness that affects the beasts entered us: I would certainly have butted heads with anyone that tried to stop me!
Father was sitting beside us when we woke in each other’s arms.
“You two are fucking amazing.”
So now we knew the word for what we were doing. We did it quite often from then on. The truth is that we only stopped to eat! When the rams had gone back to nibbling grass we were still doing it.
“How would you like to try a wee experiment? You don’t have to decide right away, of course, but I was thinking that you should leave the garden and see how you get on in the big world.”
He explained that he had set up the garden so it supplied everything we needed without us having to do anything but pick the fruit and dig up the vegetables. He thought we would be a bit daffy, totally unable to find food and shelter for ourselves, but we had proved to be quite enterprising. Now he wanted to widen his experiment to give us our chance to live as we pleased.
“Are you trying to tell us that we’re experimental?” Eve sounded really angry. “You’re a real snake in the grass, Father!”
I wasn’t that bothered; did it really matter how we got here just so long as we were here!
“What kind of father are you to use your kids as guinea pigs? You’re disgusting!”
“Would it help if you stopped thinking of me as Father and started calling me God – after all, God works in mysterious ways, so they say?”
“C’mon Adam, let’s get our stuff and get out of here. I don’t want to stay where this creepy old pervert controls our lives. I’d rather take a chance with the real jackals!”
“What stuff? I’ve only got two apples left over from yesterday and they’re wizened.”
Eve was halfway to the gate by this time so I shrugged at Father, or God or whoever he is, and went after her. We walked towards some distant mountains with only the two rotting apples to eat and brackish water from a burn to drink.
“Why did you say he’s a pervert?” I asked as we stumbled on our cut and swollen feet towards the foothills.
“Well, he’s wearing that long white gown and we’re bare naked. I caught him looking at my boobs.”
“I can’t blame him for that! Anyway I like being naked – it makes it easier when we want to fuck. By the way, we could stop for a wee rest now if you fancied it.”
“Don’t be disgusting, Adam. There’s a time and place for that sort of thing. You go and find wood for the fire and I’ll look around for some nuts for dinner. From now on you’ll have to earn your pleasure.”
So we left home in Eden and went out to conquer the world. We did pretty well on the whole, I have to admit, but there are still times when I get homesick for the days when you just reached up and plucked your dinner from a branch. What I miss most of all is being naked and turning to Eve, all warm and willing, for recreational sex.
Swearwords: Some strong ones.
Description: Genesis, but not as we know it.
_____________________________________________________________________
Judging from what I have learned since, I was about ten when I noticed that I was lonely. It was lovely in the garden and I was still having fun with all the animals but none of them talked. Father popped up from time to time to ask how I was getting on but he just made a note of what I said. Nothing I said surprised him so there was no speculation in our conversations: I noticed something different in the garden that he already knew about. Nothing I said made him raise an eyebrow.
“A lamb died yesterday. It fell into a pond, kicked about a bit and then went quiet. When I got it out it had stopped breathing.”
“Interesting. Could you have pulled it out sooner?”
“I suppose so. In fact, I would have run to help if I had known what would happen.”
“Fascinating! Well done, my boy.”
“Then last night a jackal came into the garden and took the dead lamb away.”
“Did you see what it did with the lamb?”
He wandered off at that point. I made up my mind that next time something died I would follow the jackal to see what it did with the body. I would like to have talked the idea over with someone because I was a bit afraid. I was thinking of doing something that wasn’t necessary for my survival. I couldn’t chat about things like that with Father.
So I realised that I was lonely. I needed someone like me to be my pal, my buddy. When I told Father, he really looked at me for the first time.
“That makes sense, Adam. I should have thought of it for myself. I’m astonished that you’ve had an idea that I didn’t anticipate. I need to think about that. In the meantime, I’ll give you a little playmate.”
The next morning I woke up with a pain in my ribs as bad as the time I was kicked by a donkey when we were fooling around and wrestling. I went down to the pool to look at my reflection to see if there was a bruise but all there was is a thin red line on my side.
I was walking back to get a banana for breakfast when I met Father holding the hand of another being quite like me. He introduced the creature as ‘a woman’ who had to be called ‘her’ or ‘she’.
“This is Eve,” Father told me, letting go of her hand and pushing her towards me.
She is about my age, I suppose, and she is quite friendly; in fact, she can be a bit too friendly at times. She follows me about always asking questions. I liked the attention at first because I knew almost as much more than her as Father did me. The trouble is that she is a quick learner so I lost my superiority quite soon. From then on she still asked questions but she would argue about the answers I gave. She even asked questions of Father and argued with him, a thing I had never dared to do. He would laugh most of the time but I sometimes heard him mumbling to himself:
“This is remarkable. I really think they could be capable of free will. Who would have thought when I moulded that clay?”
Once Eve settled down, we began egging each other on. I had always picked fruit that was at eye level but she urged me to climb up the trees.
“What’s the point? It’s still just a cherry when all is said and done. Let the birds have the high fruit, why don’t you?”
“If you really liked me, you would get that big cherry right near the top of the tree.”
“Look, here’s two cherries right beside my hand that make more than that one fruit at the top of the tree.”
“It’s not the same, though. I want the big one. Give the two little ones to the birds if you like them so much!”
Father told me that this was an argument. He was overjoyed that Eve and I had them. After an argument we would leave each other alone for a while. We had our own special friends amongst the other animals in the garden. After a while we would get together again; none of the others talked so we only had each other to speak to. Even an argument was better than not talking at all.
She was with me when I followed a jackal out to the edge of the garden carrying a dead kid in its mouth. It was dark so we didn’t see very much but there was a lot of snarling. The next morning we ventured out of the garden to look at the place the jackal had gone with the kid. The ground round about was churned up and there were traces of blood – we even found a bone with all the flesh eaten off it.
“Did you know about this, Adam?” It was obvious that the jackal and his mates had eaten the kid but I needed time to think, so I challenged her to race back into the garden instead of answering.
“C’mon, Adam, if you know what’s going on, tell me.”
You only have to look at the teeth to work out that some animals are designed to eat grass and shrubs while others like the lion and the jackal are equipped to rip apart flesh. I wondered if they only ate dead animals. I also wondered what flesh would taste like – I love fruit and vegetables, don’t get me wrong, but I did wonder about eating flesh.
Some time after this, Eve drew my attention to rather odd behaviour amongst the flocks and herds. Most of the time they quietly munch grass but then there comes a season when they become restless. The rams in particular become very excited, fighting with each other by banging their heads together. Then they climb on the back of the ewes and put their piddlers into them.
Now I had noticed right from the start that Eve and I were slightly different but I had given it very little thought since Father had explained that she was a ‘woman’. Recently she had grown lumps on her chest and we had grown hairs round the bits that were different. It almost seemed that the hair was trying to draw our attention to the area.
Watching the rams caused a change that almost frightened me to death. My piddler is soft and small, dangling at the top of my thighs. Now it grew fatter and began to point upwards. Eve was almost as worried as I was; she put her hand on it to try to force it back down where it belongs. Her hand moved on it and I experienced the most pleasant sensations centred on my groin but pervading every part of my being.
“What can I do, Adam? I was trying to make it go down but it seems to be getting bigger.”
“Just keep rubbing it Eve.”
When I explained what I was feeling she wondered if rubbing her piddler would feel nice so we tried it with equal success. We found that the feelings intensified at times so we spent days doing nothing but finding out how to get the most pleasure. It was Eve who wondered if I could do to her what the rams did to the ewes. Some of the madness that affects the beasts entered us: I would certainly have butted heads with anyone that tried to stop me!
Father was sitting beside us when we woke in each other’s arms.
“You two are fucking amazing.”
So now we knew the word for what we were doing. We did it quite often from then on. The truth is that we only stopped to eat! When the rams had gone back to nibbling grass we were still doing it.
“How would you like to try a wee experiment? You don’t have to decide right away, of course, but I was thinking that you should leave the garden and see how you get on in the big world.”
He explained that he had set up the garden so it supplied everything we needed without us having to do anything but pick the fruit and dig up the vegetables. He thought we would be a bit daffy, totally unable to find food and shelter for ourselves, but we had proved to be quite enterprising. Now he wanted to widen his experiment to give us our chance to live as we pleased.
“Are you trying to tell us that we’re experimental?” Eve sounded really angry. “You’re a real snake in the grass, Father!”
I wasn’t that bothered; did it really matter how we got here just so long as we were here!
“What kind of father are you to use your kids as guinea pigs? You’re disgusting!”
“Would it help if you stopped thinking of me as Father and started calling me God – after all, God works in mysterious ways, so they say?”
“C’mon Adam, let’s get our stuff and get out of here. I don’t want to stay where this creepy old pervert controls our lives. I’d rather take a chance with the real jackals!”
“What stuff? I’ve only got two apples left over from yesterday and they’re wizened.”
Eve was halfway to the gate by this time so I shrugged at Father, or God or whoever he is, and went after her. We walked towards some distant mountains with only the two rotting apples to eat and brackish water from a burn to drink.
“Why did you say he’s a pervert?” I asked as we stumbled on our cut and swollen feet towards the foothills.
“Well, he’s wearing that long white gown and we’re bare naked. I caught him looking at my boobs.”
“I can’t blame him for that! Anyway I like being naked – it makes it easier when we want to fuck. By the way, we could stop for a wee rest now if you fancied it.”
“Don’t be disgusting, Adam. There’s a time and place for that sort of thing. You go and find wood for the fire and I’ll look around for some nuts for dinner. From now on you’ll have to earn your pleasure.”
So we left home in Eden and went out to conquer the world. We did pretty well on the whole, I have to admit, but there are still times when I get homesick for the days when you just reached up and plucked your dinner from a branch. What I miss most of all is being naked and turning to Eve, all warm and willing, for recreational sex.
About the Author
Originally from Dalmuir, Alasdair McPherson is now retired and living in exile in Lincolnshire.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned seven novels and many short stories. His four latest novels, The Island, Pilgrimage of Grace, Desert Ark and Swordsmiths are McStorytellers publications.
You can read Alasdair's full profile on McVoices.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned seven novels and many short stories. His four latest novels, The Island, Pilgrimage of Grace, Desert Ark and Swordsmiths are McStorytellers publications.
You can read Alasdair's full profile on McVoices.