The Gates of Eden

A tremor of flesh-and-blood desire splits the cedar plank of Shaker perfectionism when Evelyn—eyes like frost catching sunrise—confesses to the white-cloaked congregation that her womb has quickened beneath William’s covenant of secret caresses. The elders, whose lips have long forgotten the salt of another mouth, brand the lovers “living sin” and parade them through corn-dry lanes, rattling hoes and psalms until the couple, with unborn Eve beating between them, trudge past the gates of Eden into the world’s cold maw. A dawn birth in a roadside barn: Evelyn’s pulse flickers out like the last candle in an Advent wreath, leaving William clutching a squalling bundle already pronounced dead by the same hands that rocked cradles of celibate ghosts. Years ossify into obsidian resolve; William returns, a solitary revenant, to rake memory’s coals and ignite a reckoning that will either cauterize or cremify whatever remains of paradise.