Free Eden's Eyes by Sean Costello

and spent countless hours on swollen knees before the big, hand-carved crucifix in the den. At first her withdrawal had concerned Bert deeply, making him fearful that she had finally slipped all the way over the edge. This fear was bolstered when, one morning after Eve thought he was gone, Bert had peeked in through the skeleton-keyhole of the locked den door, alarmed by the strange noises he'd heard coming from inside. To his astonishment, he glimpsed his wife sitting naked in her wheelchair, uttering what sounded like incantations before the crucifix, which she had somehow managed to turn upside down. Straining to listen through the heavy oak door, Bert had caught only snatches. . . bizarre stuff about revenge, resurrection, "Let his undead spirit rise"—and with these words she had pawed herself obscenely—"let them face him, in horror. . . vengeance. . . whole again. . ." Then her voice had faded to whispers.
    Bert went to work and said not a word—but he came within an ace that morning of having her committed.
    Eve had always turned a blind eye on her son's abuses, even when they were leveled at her, which had been more and more often as the years went by. Bert knew the reason for this well enough, and although he considered it fanatical, he still found himself feeling guilty over it. He had realized Eve was deeply religious when he met her, but they had been teenagers then, and Eve had been so beautiful, so. . . desirable. They loved one another, there had never been any question about that. But Eve had wanted to wait until they were married before yielding to the carnal imperative that whipped them both into a lusting frenzy each time, Bert kissed her lips or fondled her breasts, concessions Eve had allowed only at the expense of hours of penance afterward.
    So one night Bert had gotten her drunk, lacing her Coke with vodka. . . and he had taken advantage. It wasn't as if he'd intended running out on her afterward, far from it. And oh, what a night it had been! But that one impassioned mistake had nearly ruined them. For weeks afterward Eve had refused to speak to him. She ignored his calls and, snubbed him in the street. . . until one day in angry exasperation Bert confronted her as she came out of church. In a heated exchange just out of earshot of Eve's
    parents, also devout worshipers, Bert reminded, her that, she had enjoyed it, too, had even begged him to continue when at the last possible moment he had quickly pulled out. She had cuffed him hard for that—and with Eve's solid, big-boned frame behind it the blow had rocked his head back painfully—and then kissed him, right there in front of her parents and the disgorging house of God. They were married a month later, a full two years ahead of their original plan.
    The real trouble began a year after that, when they decided to start a family. Try as they might, nothing happened. . . and with the brimstone inevitability of her upbringing, Eve blamed it on sin. She was a fornicatress a Godless strumpet, and now she was being punished for it. The Lord had singled her out, transformed her womb into a cracked and peeling wasteland. She had bent to the sin of lust, and now she was barren. This belief led to others—"God and Satan are One," she would rail at him in outbursts as sudden and unexpected as meteor strikes. "Satan is God; God when he's angry. Without the Dark Prince, without evil, there can be no good."
    Soon, books began appearing in the mail, manuals of the arcane—magic, witchcraft, Satanism—and before long Eve had begun quoting from them, defending her actions with claims that God Himself had prompted her studies. "I must understand His dark side," she told Bert, "before I can receive forgiveness." She poured over these lurid texts for hours, concentrating mostly on fertility chants and spells against her enemies, whose numbers seemed to swell with each passing day.
    That had been the first turning point, the first real rift in Eve's grasp of