The Book
12 The morning brought new life.
2 Overnight the garden had grown and the animals multiplied exponentially.
3 The whole of the city then mimicked the interior of the park.
4 And after Leah concealed herself within the closet, she poked through the clothes and looked out into the room.
5 Isaac had gone. Followed the directive of the stars. And Leah was left to wonder.
6 Her bare skin tickling, she looked down to watch tiny spiders just hatched and falling from a hidden recess in the rafters descend onto her legs.
7 Thousands came. And hundreds more.
8 They crawled out from the floorboards, pushing up loose nails, and onto the bed.
9 From the gaps in the ceiling flew birds with open mouths, picking up three, then leaving out the opposite end of the room.
10 Leah threw on a dress from the closet and ran out into the city, but what she found was not the Eden as she had seen it before.
11 The animals were too many.
12 The plants ravaged by hungry mouths and stampeding feet. And thirsty tongues drained the fountains and tore through the wells in search.
13 Leah stood, her hands to her eyes, her sobs heard throughout the city alongside the sounds of wolves devouring the starving, and females of all species fainting under the strain of multiple births.
14 And Isaac nowhere to be found.
15 Leah sickened herself, ran inside, and shut the door.
16 The spiders had gone.
17 She fell onto the bed in hopes of dreaming, then waking to find Isaac rising from the dust: an Isaac to close the circle. An Isaac to join with. The Isaac she once parted.
18 But the dreaming was over.
19 The city lay in ruins and there was nothing left of Isaac and her eyes fell to the candle, lit next to the bed.
20 Tipping it, she shut her eyes: the wood burned.
21 She could smell the end of Eden.