Anesidora, cold, wet and terrified, surveyed the great inner ocean that forty days of torrential storms had created in what had once been the Garden her would be lover had recreated for her.

The raft He’d cast her on still somehow held together, and some of the provisions He’d placed there still somehow remained secured against the sole bulkhead, next to the great box He’d gifted her but warned her never to open.

She recalled family legends of the forbidden fruit her great grandmother, several generations distant was set to have savored against His wishes, and the price she and all her descendants and contemporaries had been required to pay.

Flotsam floated nearby, the residue of all that had been, shattered and broken and soaked. Corpses littered the unclean water, corpses of all kinds of animals, all kinds and ages of people, all kinds of trees and foliage and vegetation. For some reason, no one had tried to save themselves during the deluge by climbing aboard. She would have welcomed that. Apparently no one had seen her or the raft, a consequence of His insane jealousy and His punishment for her refusal to yield, and He had blamed her for the consequences of his rage, the destruction of all that lived, as far as she could tell, except perhaps the denizens of the watery depths, and perhaps some hardy waterfowl.

He’d been so pleasant and reasonable when He’d initiated his courtship, but to her, so frightening, manifesting in different aspects meant to please and seduce her, but when He came as a giant swan with human genitalia, or had it been an archangel, she’d become terrified and, hysterical, and demanded that He leave her alone.

In one timeline He’d complied all too literally. She was utterly and completely alone. In another she’d yielded, been inseminated and bore fruit, but apparently the fruit had been threaded with poison which caused devastation everywhere it spread. Devastation in the name all that’s Holy.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2019; all rights reserved. Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia although he has primarily lived in the United States of America (of which he is a citizen). Until recently he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.