Free Descent07 - Paradise Damned by S M Reine

another part of the illusion—the game that Adam was playing with her.
    Elise wouldn’t forget again.
    But she could feel the truth slipping away from her as she stared into the shimmering, glowing depths of the young Tree. Its bark was no more than a glowing membrane with entire universes held captive inside.
    This was Earth, as He must have known it in the beginning: a wild, untouched jungle. It was a memory of her home, almost as good as the real thing.
    She could stay there if only she would step through that door.
    The thought popped into her mind unbidden.
    No. She would never cross through.
    Adam approached her from the other side of the Tree. The jungle seemed to part around Him, as if to carve a soft path for His feet to walk upon—or as if they were afraid of touching Him. He emerged into the clearing as radiant and naked as they day that He was made.
    “This comes from my memory instead of yours,” He said. “Is it better?”
    Elise clenched her fist in the grass, tearing a handful of blades out of the dirt. She could hear each one severed like the strings of a harp being plucked. The garden sighed softly, lamenting the pain.
    Better? How could it be better ?
    She quivered with rage as she stared up at Him, her eyes fixed to His broad chest and unable to meet His gaze. Her muscles vibrated with tension. The urge to attack was strong, but she knew there was no point. He would never let her near Him—not until she succumbed to the garden.
    “You seem calmer. Have you changed your mind about the door?” He asked.
    “No,” Elise said.
    She could feel how hurt He was by her refusal. It made her teeth ache. “It’s an honor to rule at my side,” He said, almost sounding kind. “You’ll realize this soon, and we can start over again.”
    Elise remembered hearing this speech once before, when she had first arrived in the garden as a fourteen-year-old girl. But it hadn’t come from Adam. It had come from the bride that preceded Elise—a frail old woman who had introduced herself as Eve with so much confidence that there was no doubt in Elise’s mind that “Eve” believed the identity to be true.
    It’s an honor to rule by His side. Once you come to terms with it, He’ll be able to start over again, Eve had said with a rapturous expression on her withered face, as if she couldn’t imagine anything more glorious than Adam’s new beginning.
    Elise had asked, What do you mean, start over? but had never gotten an answer.
    Through that door , Eve had said, and she had pointed at it. At the time, it hadn’t looked like James’s bedroom door. It had looked like the entrance to Pamela Faulkner’s house, with a brass pentagram set into the window.
    Its appearance may have changed, but the door was the same, and the outcome would be, too.
    There was nothing that could make Elise walk through that goddamn door.
    “Are you ready?” He asked.
    Elise lifted her eyes to His burning face as best she could. The door was beyond Him. Somehow, she knew that it would always be just beyond Him. Waiting.
    “Try me,” she said.
    Before the last syllable even passed her lips, the garden disappeared.
    Elise unfolded.
    White hands clawed at her face, clammy with the chill of death. Elise rolled on a bed of corpses that pawed at her body, begging forgiveness, begging for mercy—but only for an instant.
    They were soon replaced by her father’s cold eyes. You let your guard down.
    Serpents roiled in her belly, then poured over her tongue and out of her nostrils. They dripped from her orifices in scaly black strings, making her eyes water. Elise gagged on them so hard that she felt her stomach surging into her esophagus.
    She could almost see Him through the tears—the hazy outline of His face, unimaginably handsome and as classic as ancient paintings—but she wasn’t sure if it was real or panicked imaginings.
    Even if she wasn’t sure if she saw Him or not, she certainly felt His hands raking down her arms,