Adam was dead, there was no denying that, although the serpent would swear it was what he had never intended.

Come now! wrap yourself from head to toe around a human body and squeeze, and then claim you didn't mean him any harm?

Oh, harm, said the serpent, of course I meant him harm. I meant to make my presence felt, but I certainly never meant to kill him.

Indeed. And yet you squeezed him hard enough to crack every bone in his skeleton into little tiny pieces, which have melded with the muscles to form a soft, dead pulpy mush where once was living flesh, I ask you.

Well, bones. . . skeletons--when it comes to that I don't know what any self-respecting creature is doing carrying around. . .

Unfamiliar with your own anatomy I see.

Sure, we have one sleek line of spine as any self-respecting creature would, not a mass of spread out--mammals! I'd give up eating mammals altogether if they weren't so tasty, for that very reason. Bone structure! folding out in all directions making chests and torsos and limbs when all any creature really needs is a spine, you ever try to digest one of those things?

I see you haven't tried that with Adam. Sport killing then? Crime of passion? Be that as it may, Adam had a well-articulated multi-directional bone structure. I stress the word had. And you crushed it to a pulp, piercing his heart and other vital organs so that life functions ceased. You killed him.

A little squeeze like that, who could've expected it would've, listen! there are plenty of lady snakes around, you squeezed them only that hard, they'd think the honeymoon was over, and when it comes to squeezing--let me tell you about this grizzly bear I was going around with for a--

You killed him.

Sure! keep on saying that, I know that already does intention? Count for anything I didn't mean to. I've never coiled my full impressive length (I mean you must admit there's a superior glimmer to those scales in the bright light of the sun) around a person before--I was supposed to know in advance he was that puny?

You should have gone easy until you knew for sure.

Yeah, great, that's obvious now but at the time was a different matter. And now's too late. Anyway I didn't hear you piping up and telling me all this when I had him enwrapped.

You were too busy tightening your grip to hear me.

Sure. Sure, always some excuse. But, look at it from my point of view. . . if you were me. . .
I am looking at it from your point of view. I am you.

Yes, yes, yes, all very well but if you are me why do you argue with me so much?

I'm the part of you that argues with you. Tries to straighten you out.

As if there were anything in existence straighter than a snake.

Except when it slithers. . . verbally or otherwise.

Sure, sure, an answer to everything, so what's your solution to this little teaser? He's dead unless you can suggest some way to bring him back, not that it'd be worth the effort necessarily. . .

Hidden resentment. . . a quarrel. . . motive emerging? What was it the two of you were scrapping about?

You need to ask? Aren't you me, I mean you just said. . .

I'll ask the questions if you don't mind.

Hmm. Well if you must know. . . it was Eve. Hand if I had one on heart, I don't like the way he treats her--

Treated her.

--one bit. I don't think he even begins to appreciate what a really great woman he has there. Eve, I mean, what can I tell you? She's special, and I'm not saying that only because she's the one single female of her species alive on this earth, though it's a factor of course. Special. Write it up in capital letters SPECIAL! you meet a lady that special, you're ready to overlook entirely the fact that she's a mammal.

You wanted Adam out of the way so you could. . .

No! Not at all, I was simply angry at what he. . . I. . . at. . . he. . . the serpent was so angry and muddled he wrapped himself around a great tree, from the top to the bottom of its length, and squeezed and squeezed until the tension of his muscles quieted a little. Any objections? Trees don't mind being squeezed you know. Can't hurt a big tough old tree like this by squeezing.

No objections. You did notice, however, that this is not an apple but a chestnut tree?

God damned apples! That was what I resented most, him blaming Eve, I'll tell you this, even if Eve took the first bite, and in the heat of the action it was very hard to tell for sure, even if Eve did take the first bite--

Which she never denied, at the time or since.

What do you expect? She loves the jerk--Adam took bigger bites. More of 'em too.

You had a certain responsibility in that whole affair don't forget.

Well. . . those apples looked pretty good to me too, I was supposed to know they were death on a twig? I didn't force anything down anyone's throat, ohh! Eve! thought of you drives me right round a tree, soft slithering curves, caresses round swelling, downy blonde hair on calf and nesting between thighs like the very burning bush of instruction and life! Rapture divine to--

Come come now, we're getting away from the issue at hand which is this corpse of Adam lying dead and soon stoney at your feet.

Feet?

You know what i mean. Also your complicity in the fall of man.

Of humanity if you don't mind. Eve, in case you haven't noticed, is a woman.

Consciences don't deal with that sort of thing.

Bet you will be a lot when there's more population. Anyway there's more than one view on this fall business. What's the use of being at a height all the time. Fall and struggle back up to the height or you never know what Paradise you're enjoying.

Sophistry.

You do better. Besides, a woman like Eve, I ask you, how could she show to best advantage in a garden? has to be out in the world where she can be seen, heard about, seen. You mark my words, her daughter, and her sons too, will thank me.

Daughters and sons, out of what? Adam's dead.

It's still early in creation, things haven't settled, codified yet, crossbreeding between species still a viable--holy shit! Conscience, I've just figured out how to set things straight.

Devil, I can tell what you're thinking, and I'm not sure it's such a hot--

Devil? What devil, what are you talking about, I'm a snake, what's a devil?

Sorry, that was a later theological concept, yes yes at this point you're just a snake listen! I really think you should--

I'm going to do it, conscience, you better hang on tight and stick with me if you don't want to get left. Oof! Oof!

So the serpent, to cover up the killing of Adam and at trhe same time capture his heart's desire, Eve as a bride, assumed Adam's skin as his own. To be precise, he wriggled inside, using as his point of ingress Adam's asshole. (This is the origin of the Riddle of the Sphincter, famous among the ancients.) Conscience entered man along with the serpent.

Yet Adam must not have been quite dead yet, or the gone life inside him responded by quickening once again to the throbbing within every vein of the serpent. For the two life-essences merged, so it was scarcely possible to tell where one left off and the other began. The snake took on Adam's sinewy features and his vanity in the tawny fluff lying richly about his form. (The snake himself would have preferred scales.) He took on warm blood, and pity, and gave keen, skeptical intelligence in return. He took on, though the very idea made him shiver, Adam's overelaborated mammal skeleton of bones now regenerating and healing under the pulsing course of snake life: now healed. Adam gained memory of much that had happened in creation before he was made, direct memory of things that had been only stories told by his father Jehovah up till now. And there made their first appearance on Adam's face that day, those snake-lines by men called wrinkles. The means by which he transferred these to Eve are no part of our story.

Their natures enwrapped so thoroughly that a new creature was mixed into being, monstrous, wonderful, intricate and eternally divided within and against itself.

So complicated was the exchange that it would be impossible to say which, Adam or the serpent, came out ahead on the deal. It is only known that neither would have renounced the bargain for anything on earth, because both of them got Eve.