Chapter Two: A Bad Dream, Part 1: The Fields, the Garden, the Kid, and the Boy

On the eve of that night, the sun emerges. A land so free and so vast that you can see how the curvature drops and remasses, reshapes, and reforms—the land in which the sky welds whole—that's what we’ve seen so often. Picture perfect irradiances where a newborn of orange and yellow intersect the blues of the sky that have always been there not yet before or after, turning what we know into what we don't. Because it was still night, the moon fell into heaven and you could see it, but the sun was already over its horizon, yet this action had not overcome the luminous darkness. There was a war waging on. Where the night took what little light there was. A time where errata is not so significant and the fusion of dusk and dawn is made, "The Red Herring," they called it. The meridian of night and day. The moon will become nothing less than tadpoles; for a moment, it is the dominant one, but excessive is the recursiveness of its opposite, the sun, which will always take place. And what we know will return.

God was far off in the distance. He had held two fallen generals, Capacious and Rel by the collars of their clothing. An angel who was on top of the kingdom walls saw through his scope the aberration and sounded the horn. They’ve found him. Jehovah revved all of them uphill to the forest's edge and passed out from fatigue before arriving at his destination.

Dozing in and out of consciousness his is mouth was in desperate need of any sort of enzyme to ease its state of desiccation. God still had a tight grip on the two, but it wasn’t him doing all the work; it was his right hand. His hand worried for its partner, wanting to assist in any way it could. It also kept in mind that Jehovah would be slighted in the most heinous of ways if they escaped. It had to hold on for a little longer.

God’s eyes shut. He opened them back and he could tell several minutes had passed. That was a good thing; he was still there; what little was left. He smiled. Flights of fancy stay with him now. He was neither asleep nor awake, right in the middle, in a sort of REM state, and vivid was his imagination.

The point of view is from his eyes. It was when he was younger. He lay in a field of sunflowers. He could feel the soft soil under him almost sinking him, pulling him around the cushion of terra. This was one of the most blissful moments of his life. All he did was lay, looking at the cloud that winked at him. Jehovah giggled.

“Hey, are you still there?” A voice spoke from the other side of an intense row of sunflowers.

The wall obscured Jehovah's sight. He wasn’t staring in that direction, only up, but he lay right next to it and could hear the kid. A young Jehovah said, “Yeah, I’m here.”

“A cloud winked at me.”

“I know. I saw it too.”

He could hear a tussle over the hedge. Jehovah raised an eyebrow and lifted his head ever so slightly up in a crunch position with his feet resting on the dirt and knees bent partially up and his hands were being used as a hammock for the back of his head. "Are you okay?”

“No.” The kid complained, “My spot stinks. The dirt here is all dried up, and the sun is in my eyes.”

“You saw the cloud wink, didn’t you?” Jehovah questions what he is saying: “Are there no sunflowers where you're at? It's a patch? I’m next to dozens.” The tussling got a tad bit more aggressive, and the kid got up. “What is it now?”

The kid said, “Dude, switch spots with me.”

“No.”

“Please”

“I like where I'm at."

He rolled to his side and rested on his elbow, now fixated on the wall of shrubbery. Tangled up thick plant stems and a flower perched at top of that plant, like the centerpiece of a Christmas tree, loomed above the boy. Leaning slightly overweight, casting a shadow so great. The base is strong enough to keep the drag to a bare minimum; in most cases, a quick trim was needed to the sunflowers before the necks bent into themselves and died. The faded petals threatened to fall at any gust, and even more noticeable was that the linguistic colors didn't pop out like they once did. Although there is no such thing as a natural division of the color spectrum, every language has the color words by which it speaks. And the shades for which the sunflowers spoke were whispering to the wind. The yellow went, the burgundy in the middle was nearly erased, and so too was the green, which all plants have. Petals began to fall from the flowers like leaves do from trees this time of year.

Jehovah adjusted so his voice could be heard clearly: “You chose to sit over there. You can sit by me if you’d like.”

The kid as if he were walking on hot rocks said back, “You want me to lay down by you?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“No thanks, that's disgusting.”

"Not like that..." Jehovah rolled his eyes.

He had a feeling he was going to give in to the kid's demand. He never minded switching places; he only enjoyed the banter and badger. He would do this with the kid, and the kid back to him. You see, the children never grieved about, well, anything at all. So, whenever they got the chance, they would release their pent-up grievances. And all they both wanted to do was sit, grumble and fight with each other. A love-hate relationship, but more love than hate. They couldn’t be mad at the world, so they did this.

Jehovah switched spots, going to the left side of the wall. The kid rotated to his left, Jehovah's right side. The area in which the kid was sitting was fine. It was the same as his, but the sun, in his defense, was directly hitting the opening of this side. Jehovah laid the way he was before, took a breath of fresh air, and closed his eyes. He felt the sun’s warmth bathe him. He exhaled.

Tussling was heard once more.

Jehovah asked satirically, “Is everything going well over there?” He said, “It's a little warmer here. Over there, the ground is much softer, and there is definitely more shade. You could see the clouds perfectly from where I was.”

“It’s cold, and I don't much like it here either.”

Stolen novel; please report.

Jehovah suggested to him, “Do you want to switch?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t see your problem.”

There was a pause for some time before the kid spoke again. He said, “I figured out the solution.”

Jehovah replies, “Oh, yeah? Does this solution involve you just coming over here or me going over there?”

“No, can you hear me out for once?”

“I do it all the time. Shoot.”

The kid explains, “We, and when I say we, I mean you. You should take out the middleman.”

Jehovah, less enthused than before said, “Who’s the middleman?”

The kid: “Not, who, what, this thing here. Uproot the wall,” he said, pointing at the wall.

Jehovah: “I can’t see you if you're pointing at the wall."

He stuttered out, “How did you know I was doing that?" The kid looked at his index finger down the barrel and blushed, putting his hand behind his back.

“I didn’t.” He got up and said, “But now I do. And why didn’t you just say that originally? Instead, you have to say some middlemen and use the term tuberculosis out of place.”

“Everything makes me want to have tuberculosis. What can I say?”

“Something nice would be a good change.” He saw the beauty of the wall. It was several feet taller than him, and he thought the sunflowers were here before them. It had been planted for a purpose a long time ago by an angel who, if the children had known, would not let the act go unpunished. Jehovah shook his head and de-rooted the wall anyway.

“See much better.”

Jehovah preferred either way. He could see why the boy liked it. It was a smart plan if the intent was to open this one spot in the middle of the field. He also reimagined what it used to be, only a second ago. He felt bad rubbing his shoulder. “I feel sick," Jehovah said. The kid told him to look up. “Hey, I'm not really feeling too well anymore.”

The kid seems to steal the life out of the boy, reinvigorated. He asked Jehovah, “Is this about the flowers?” He said cheerfully, “It looks better. It doesn't feel as claustrophobic. It's spacious. It’s not so cold here, and it’s not so hot there. Now we’ll have a place to come when we come back, like a hideout.” The boy wasn’t sure. The kid reassures the boy by going over to him and patting him on the back. “There are so many flowers in this patch. Look around. Nothings really gone.”

Jehovah looked up and saw what the kid was talking about. The more he talked, the more convinced he was.

"Yeah, you're right, it’s nothing.” Jehovah agreed.

The kid laughed and patted his back more, as if he were burping an infant. He exclaims, “Of course I'm right! We can plant our own garden one day.”

Jehovah brightened up with every word. He replied ecstatically, "Yeah, we could. That’s actually a good idea, Lucille. We’ll plant our own garden. To commemorate today! We could do it right here.”

Lucille said disillusioned, “Oh, I didn't really think we were actually going to do it, but I like your enthusiasm. It's infectious!"

Jehovah gave a big smile over to the kid, giving him the thumbs up. “It’s all because of you, Lucille.” He grabbed a hold of his friend and said, “We will name it Eden.”

Lucille, under his arms, repeated, “The Garden of Eden?”

“Yep. We’ll have all the flowers in heaven there. A few new ones too. Do you know how to garden and do all that kind of stuff?”

“No idea, you?”

"I have no clue, seeds? We'll get a few and dig. That should be it, right?” Jehovah looked at his hand for guidance. “Do you know how to garden?”

His hand did sign language and he signed, "Yes," bowling his hand into a fist and nodding like one would their head for the response, going up and then down.

Jehovah used his left hand to point at his right and said, “He knows.”

Lucille: “Who? Your hand? Not this again.”

Jehovah interjected, explaining for the seventeenth time today, "I swear my hand talks to me."

“And girls talk to me.”

"No, they don’t.”

"That... that's my point. I didn’t think you were going to say it out loud. I thought you knew.”

“Oh, I know. That’s why I said it.”

“That’s not what I mean, uh, you know what? We're getting off subject!” Lucille pointed at him and said as a skeptic, “If it can do anything, make it do a backflip then.”

Jehovah said estranged, “That’s all you want?”

“Yep." The hand quickly flipped Lucille off. Jehovah swatted at the hand, but it quickly reposed, and he missed. "You're a real class act, you that" The hand was almost uncanny. It was doing it by itself, turning up and over, doing the best backflip it could.

“See backflip," Jehovah said.

“That was actually really cool.” He stretched his back and yawned.

“So, do you believe me?” Jehovah said holding index at his hand and poking it.

“I never thought you were lying to begin with." Lucille glared into the sun to tell what time it was and said, “I think it’s time to go.”

“What? Go where?” Lucille abruptly left the sunflower fields. Jehovah chortled and followed, moving the plants that leaned onto their sides and shuffled across the obstacles on the ground. Lucille picked up his pace. He turns and turns, going into a few circles before he comes to a stop. “Is this a game, Lucille?” Jehovah asked, breathing heavy. For some strange reason, he felt fear.

“Oh, games?” Lucille's voice changed. It was an older version of what his voice was—deep and raspy—and life seemed to have been taken out of it. A certain tone of joy a person has—when listening to him now, you could tell it was lost. “I like games." He said, "I have a game we could play. It’s called Of Mice and Men. You can be the mouse. And I’ll be the exterminator.”

Lucifer turned around. As he turned, he grew and changed. Everything about the dream morphed. Jehovah was no longer a child, and feelings of angst, pain, uneasiness, and sorrow flooded him. The feelings were so palpable they could be felt and seen, brewing as dark clouds over the young men—the mists of purgatory, you could say. Memories of Jehovah's past, which he could not escape, were coming to him in his sleep. He was so deep in sleep that he wouldn’t have woken even if the dream were real.

His heart raced, and he knew what this was. He was going back to a time when heaven turned to hell. A time when heaven was on the verge of capitulation. Lucifer had made binding vows with all his followers and ruled over all of the northern regions of heaven. At this time, there was only desalination from religion. What would reside was something only Lucifer knew—the progenitor of evil.