Nicked

by M.T. Anderson

Adam’s seed is prelapsarian. During our conception, deep in our parents’ viscera, we receive sin like the pox. We are born screaming with it. But within the seed of the first man, our images are perfect and unblemished. What floats in Adam’s semen is God’s hope for what we all should have been—a perfected history, not what we became outside the gates of Eden.” The monk couldn’t stand any more flirtation.

“Was it your master who taught you to search for sacred relics?” “Yes,” said Tyun. “That’s how he died, in fact.” Reprobus chimed in: “We were seeking to claim a feather from the wings of the cherubim.” “We did not expect the violence of their glory,” said Tyun. “The wheels within wheels. Buzzing. The old bastard was sheared apart from neck to hip.”

Our worship of the divine. At the center, there is a void. Emptiness. An empty tomb. That is what all Christians long for: to find the stone rolled away, and nothing within.”