Flash! Fiction 3 by Peter McMillan - HTML preview

108

It was a perfect world. Absolutely perfect. Better than Malibu. Then one day, Eve got a little tired and bored with the straight and narrow and scampered over to the apple tree, which was a no-no.

Ed followed. Of course, Winston was there and he wooed and wowed Eve and persuaded her to squeeze the apple hard and drink the liquid. You have to remember that Adam and Eve were bigger and stronger, and even better looking, than people today.

Lots more body hair and a wonderfully sloped forehead. Squeezing the juice out of an apple by hand was no big deal. But their brains were still mostly dormant. So even though Eve and Adam looked to the heavens for guidance, Eve didn't register the anomaly of the rumbling in the clouds when she had her first swallow. Ed, too, was in the moment. From his perspective, this was sweet.

Eve took another apple  just one. The abundance of food meant that Adam and Eve didn't have to worry about hunting and gathering and storing. Every day, the items on the menu just fell into place—literally. Survival-type skills were a thing of the future, which itself was a thing of the future, since everything was now.

Eve wrung the apple until it was dry pulp and put the juice in a huge banana leaf. She carried it to Adam, who was very thirsty by late afternoon, having lain in the hot sun for hours, not comprehending why his skin was red and burning. Ed was there, too. He was still hanging around, although, by this point, he was bloated  as big as the mouse Eve was finally going to meet tomorrow morning.

Adam loved the apple juice, and Eve offered to get more, but Adam suggested that they practice their instructions first. At the crucial step in their instructions, there was a really scary clap of thunder, and a brilliant flash of lightening hit something over in the direction of the apple tree.