Work Text:
This Garden of Eden is a cold, dark room, fit with plants sprouting from the spindling cracks of a structure weighed down by its own age, fit with Angels keeping watch, fit with its own all-knowing God. There are no animals here but Adam and Eve, but they are animals of the purest kind. They have the same eyes, the same heart— One marred form molded from dirt and grime and clay, the other his rib torn from his body. Fyodor is of Dazai’s flesh, a contortion of his stolen bone. Dazai is formed from the collection of dust in the corner of a room left to rot, and he is not wretched here. Fyodor is not wretched here. Here they are God. Here they have no sin. They are not burdened with the knowledge of the world yet, unashamed of their nakedness. When a shirt slips down a shoulder it is met with acute awareness instead of shame. Man has not sinned, man knows not of good or evil.
They are tangled together, the vines creeping up the walls of the garden. They are the earth, they are the trees, they are the creatures of the sea and the sky. Dazai’s finger languidly drags up Fyodor’s spine. Fyodor cups his face, caressing the tangle of his hair. They have no hunger, they have no thirst, until the devil creeps up and whispers, “eat the apple of knowledge..”
The sensitive section of flesh between Fyodor’s neck and his collarbone is the apple of knowledge— Dazai hovers over it, the snake creeping up the vertebrae of his back and wrapping around his vocal chords. His throat catches— He cannot speak. Fyodor has tasted it for him already, urging him with a honey-coated voice to indulge just as the snake had said. He leans up and catches Dazai’s neck with his teeth. He breaks through the skin of the apple with gleeful ease, sinking into the supple flesh of the fruit that drips down his chin. It’s only one bite, but it is damning, lighting Dazai’s skin on fire. Fyodor looks up at him with the eyes of God: Blank, apathetic, and omniscient. His lips part slightly— He is the snake, forked tongue darting between colorless lips to lap up the blood that has been spilled. Dazai hovers. Dazai aches. Dazai sinks his teeth into original sin.
Adam and Eve suddenly become wretched beings. They become aware of their horrible forms, the lumps of flesh that mar their body. Knowledge is a damning burden, and they have damned everyone with it. God’s disgrace is like a fire eating them alive, and they have dissatisfied him, and they can never be forgiven no matter how many animals they slaughter to grasp at redemption.
Eden does not want them. No one does. They are cursed to leave, and so they tear each other apart like the animals they are, sinful beings with claws that slice and hearts that cannot quite love. Fyodor’s fingernails dig into the skin of Dazai’s stomach as if he is ripping him apart. He is clawing at his ribs, where he came from, where he belongs. Dazai bears into him, blunt nails dragging against skin so pale it’s nearly translucent and leaving red, angry marks in its wake. He will punish him, he will ruin him. The darkness inside of him has been kindled and raised like a boil on blistering skin. Their bodies are the snake, winding and twisting and hissing. Fyodor tips his head back. The damnation becomes too much— Dazai drinks up his subtle reaction like blood, laps up how he falls apart in his hands.
They leave Eden limping and beaten, desperately grabbing at what used to be their surroundings to clothe themselves, ripping at the leaves of life to pitifully hide the scars of time and sin and knowledge, bandages that wind around skin like the snake wound around the tree, great walls of stone emotion, barring the world out from Eden.
Dazai cannot meet the eyes of the world, cannot bear to digest his sin. He has damned the world with knowledge, and Eve is the reason why, and Eve has eyes that glitter like a doll, and Eve is a horrible excuse of a human being, and Eve is just like him, of him, his rib taking the form of a smiling devil that says he is the Lord. The devil disguises with beauty irrefutable, and Dazai falls for it again and again. One day God’s son will die on the cross and forgive all sins. Until then he will bleed goats and sheep, he will be the voice crying out in the desert, he will be the prodigal son, he will take his son to the mountaintop to die, he will cut his strength for a twisted smile that does not love him.
He will hit the giant between the eyes and become the king of nothing.