Eve: flash fiction by writer Annie Hunt

I am so excited to be sharing a flash fiction piece called “Eve” by my friend Annie Hunt.

I first met Annie back in the fall of 2010. Navigating intense social anxiety and scared out my mind to be starting undergrad, one morning I walked into a breakfast for English majors, and Annie and I ended up standing in line together. We bonded over writing, So You Think You Can Dance, and the fact that both of us were grappling with our newfound freedom from our parents and strict upbringings.

“Eve”, her piece that is shared down below, is centered on that fateful day where Adam and Eve must leave the Garden of Eden. It takes us right into Eve’s thoughts and into her hands, places that Christianity has never wanted us to see.

Photo by Margarita Zueva on Unsplash

This piece feels close to my heart, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to share “Eve” and our conversation about it.

Since the eclipses in October of 2023, I’ve been writing poetry and delving into the childhood shit that I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to stay away from with a hundred-foot pole.

Surprise, surprise, in the words that have been pouring out, Catholicism and the evangelical churches that my parents carted me through have been making quite the appearance. For many years I’ve had an intellectual knowledge that religion was something that affected me, but I don’t think I fully understood *how much* it impacted me until I started writing more poetry.

As I’ve been sifting through my memories and experiences over these past few months, Annie’s piece and the conversation we had about it has impacted the way I’ve been integrating my own history.

What I’ve been discovering is that if I had to put an origin to much of the shame that I feel about sexuality, food, pleasure, my body image, and my gender, I would say that much of it has its origins in the experiences I had within religion and the way that religion impacts so much of US culture.

I know that I’m not alone with this. Christianity and its moral code has had such a massive impact on US culture and politics that even those who didn’t grow up within it are often affected by its messages and policies on sex, bodies, sexual orientation, and gender.

You can read the full poem and check out Annie’s answers to some questions I asked her down below.

“Eve” by Annie Hunt

Packing was easy. There was nothing to take. Still, Eve looked around her home and wanted it all. She was procrastinating—consciously, deliberately—pacing inside the shade of a large willow, playing its leaves like harp strings. With her eyes closed, she pretended to feel a breeze and held onto the faint taste of tangerine in her mouth.

He had left her alone that day like she’d asked. In the darkness of the morning, she walked alone by the lily beds, stopping now and then to dig her hands into the warm earth. The sun rose slowly, revealing scattered black rabbits that had been watching her. Two rainbow macaws laughed in the trees above.

She had eaten everything she could think to remember—carrot stalks and sour grapes, plums and pears and ginger root, mint and honeysuckle. A pomegranate sat at the root of the tree where she’d left it an hour ago. Eve sat down and pulled it onto her lap, delicate as a kitten and ominous as a crystal ball. She could hear him coming. It was time to go, but she felt a distinct panic that she couldn’t let go of the pomegranate. Her legs had become extensions of the tree's root system. It would be worse though for him to enter in this last memory, she decided, so she rose to meet Adam in the sun outside the willow.

They walked next to each other past a winding creek crawling with blue and purple forget-me-nots. She looked away—Eve hated poetry. Before they passed through the two wide elms at the edge of the garden, Adam reached out his hand, and Eve took it. In her other hand, she pressed the pomegranate firmly to her thigh.

Suddenly, in the space between the elms, God swiveled around one of the trunks to reveal himself. Eve felt the sun suddenly concentrating on her solar plexus, aiming somewhere near her heart. God removed his Ray Bans and when he looked at Adam, she could feel his hand go limp in hers. She held the pomegranate tighter and stared at God’s eyes for the first time, hoping in vain it would be the last. God held a vacant stare against his beloved Adam, whose palm was now damp against hers. No words. God kept staring until the lifeless bones in Adam’s hand started to tremble like a death rattle. Then God turned to Eve.

She knew those eyes—deep set and dark with the faintest hint of green—serpentine eyes that played and provoked. She did not blink or breathe for a moment. She held onto his stare until God and Eve suddenly, simultaneously tilted their heads just an inch to the side. There was a squint, a smile, a sneer in the corner of his right eye. He put his sunglasses back on and held his arm out and away from the garden. Still no words. Eve held onto the pomegranate with five finger-shaped bruises as they walked out.

After a few paces, Eve dropped Adam’s hand, and they turned to look back at the garden for the last time, but it was gone. God and the garden had evaporated into a sudden night—cold and dry, their home blinked away. All that was left were the two elms, now leafless, their branches twisting together like solid tongues of fire, reaching and burning for each other.

Eve and Adam looked down at their bodies. After a long pause and a shaky breath, Adam looked up and out over the jagged wasteland, but Even kept searching herself. She dropped the pomegranate at her feet as her hands reached across her body, feeling empty and responsible. There were trees in the distance, preceded by a dirt path between two patchy endless fields. At the same time—Eve looking at her body, Adam staring into the distance—they both spoke for the first time: We can do better.

1. What inspired this poem?

I remember getting the idea for the story a few years ago from a giant weeping elm tree. At the time, I was working in a public garden where I spent most of my days wandering or weeding. There was the most beautiful weeping elm by the edge of the woods where I could sit on the bottom branches and hide from people. It was easy to let my mind go to the garden of Eden and imagine what it would have been like for Eve to feel lonely there. To wonder why she would be hiding. The rest unfolded from that question.

In a broader sense, this story is part of a larger project exploring the narratives of seven women in the Bible. I’ve always wanted to write a collection that gives real personality to the women who typically fade into the biblical background. Eve is so central to the image of women in Christianity, so I knew she would be included.

2. In the beginning, there’s this depiction of a sensual, desiring, and embodied Eve: digging her hands into the earth, eating all the fruit, being unable to let go of the pomegranate half. Yet at the same time, it feels like it’s something shameful, something that she has to hide from both Adam and from God. What role do you think Christianity (and the mythology around Adam and Eve) plays in women’s relationship towards opening themselves up towards the things that their bodies desire?

I love that you picked up on the sensuality Eve feels in the garden at the beginning. I wanted it to feel like a real loss—not just of the flowers and fruit, but of herself. In stepping into the reality of the world, she was effectively stepping into subjugation.

Christianity is something I have to actively grapple with in terms of how I view and inhabit my body. The Christian narrative can play out a thousand different ways, but for me, it functioned to keep me small and afraid, especially as a woman.

I grew up in a very strict, Southern fundamentalist Christian. Imagine John Lithgow in Footloose, and you’re not far off. We went to church three times a week where we were taught to essentially fear and judge the world. Women were not allowed to pray in public or lead any form of worship. Women couldn’t even teach boys who were over the age of 14, implying that a teenage boy has more wisdom than a fully-grown woman.

As women in the church, we were taught that our bodies were dangerous responsibilities. Things to repress and hide until marriage. For some people, I know these rules bring a sense of safety. But for me and most of the women I grew up with, it was an impossible standard that ran contradictory to basic human needs.

In my case, Christianity very explicitly functioned to suppress sexuality. It takes a long time to unravel that kind of belief system, especially because such extreme versions of Christianity operate on a good vs. evil binary. This is why I find it so interesting that Eve is cast as the villain from the very start. Men have always been afraid of women and their power. It’s evident in the stories they tell, which is why it’s important that women tell their own.

3. I was really struck by the imagery at the ending, with Eve continuing to turn down to look at her body even as Adam looked up and away. Can you share more about what this moment represents?

I see this scene as pretty ominous for both Eve and Adam. It’s the moment when they are first struck with the reality of the world outside of Eden—the world of suffering. I’m very interested in the differences between masculine and feminine energies (not necessarily bound by gender). Within the context of the six other stories, this is when we see the key narrative split between women and men in the Bible—men were made to conquer the world, and women were made to conquer themselves. To support men, women had to learn how to become contortionists, and this tension still very much lives in our bodies.

I know I have to fight against conformity on a very real and regular basis, whether it means feeling like I should be quieter or more attractive or less successful to make the men around me feel more comfortable. It’s a conflicting way to live—how do you fully inhabit the world when you don't feel you can fully inhabit your body? This was the question and realization that rose to the surface in that shared moment between Eve and Adam.

Meet Annie

Annie Hunt (she/her) is a writer and business analyst based in Chicago. She is the author of the young adult novella, Hooked, and the novel, Daughters of American Serial Killers. She currently lives in the city with her husband and two cats.

A big part of why I’ve created this newsletter is to help us all feel a little less alone in the world when it comes to sexuality, and I think seeing and hearing stories that resonate with our own life experiences in some way can go a long way in relieving the shame we might feel about this part of ourselves. I am so honored to have the opportunity to have been able to share Annie’s work on here.

Thank you all for being here! If you liked this piece, please click the ❤️(it helps more readers find the work), leave a comment, or even share it/restack it on Notes.