A second recording crackled to life through Jason’s headphones as he stepped into the lobby of his condominium building.

“You have been lied to.”

Jason barely heard the voice of the speaker over the ding of the elevator and the rasp of the doors as they opened. His leather shoes struck the marble floor, the sound echoing in the largely empty ground floor. He hefted the two paper bags of groceries he held in each arm and stepped into the elevator. He did his best to avoid the weary glare from the green eyes that he met in the mirrored interior of the elevator.

Jason found himself faced with a conundrum as the elevator doors slid shut in front of him. One bag balanced in the crook of his left arm, he pressed the seven on the elevator keypad while trying to maintain a decent grip on his phone. He stepped back with an audible sigh of relief when no sounds of brown paper bags ripping, or groceries tumbling around in the elevator, followed.

Jason swiped a thumb across the blank screen of his phone. He’d almost forgotten he was listening to something. The static hiss from the inferior recording equipment he had had at his disposal stopped dead. “Woah there, professor,” he said with a cheeky tone to his voice. He pressed the comment button. “A bit strong on the introduction there, maybe.” Jason sighed. “You have to remember, Jason, these are kids that haven’t even seen the other side of a church pew. Probably.”

The elevator jolted Jason as it began to ascend. “Sheltered lives. Anti-science education…” Jason looked sideways at one of the mirrored walls. “All that shit. You should know.” He pressed play.

“Alright. Let’s talk about something that’s familiar. Let’s have a show of hands. How many of you have heard of the ‘Fall of Man’?” The elevator rumbled along in the brief pause. The sound of people shifting in their chairs filtered in through the crackle of the recording’s static. Jason heard the sound of a stick of chalk tipping over the side of a desk and falling on the floor.

“Adam and Eve. Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. That old story. How many have heard of it?” Even more people shifted around. Elevator music—tacky as all hell—began to play. “I know, I know. Stupid question, but bear with me.” Jason heard a murmured counting through his earphones. “Alright. So. All of you. It’s standard catechism, right?”

Jason paused the recording and started to make a second comment. “I think you could do better. That’s not a bad way of saying ‘look, I’m desperate from some class interaction here,’ but not really encouraging to a class.” Jason shook his head. “Although, to be fair, that’s probably because of the way you decided to start that lecture. Seriously. What were you thinking?”

An orange, precariously balanced on top of a head of cabbage—Jason had never claimed to be the best at bagging groceries—nearly bounced out of its brown paper bag as the elevator slowed down and stopped at the third floor. The elevator music faded into oblivion. The silence that followed was broken by a ding and the elevator doors opening.

Jason saw a gruff man half-enter the elevator before looking up from his phone, an unlit cigarette held in the man’s free hand. Jason peeked his head from between his grocery bags and his eyes met the man’s. A pregnant moment hung in the air between them. Jason paused his audio-clip. “Hi?” he said.

The man’s eyes flicked down, Jason had no doubt, to the braided rainbow bracelet that he wore on his right wrist. The man retreated from the elevator, cigarette abandoned for the false security of the silver cross that dangled from a fine gold chain around the man’s neck. There was a mixture of terror and disgust in the man’s eyes.

Jason shook his head in disappointment as soon as he was alone in the elevator again. He started a new comment. “Tangentially, I just had an experience with a homophobe who was, at least, quiet about it.” He paused, glancing sideways at his reflection. “Don’t ever forget that this is why you wanted this teaching gig to begin with.

The orange decided to jump out of its bag and landed on the elevator floor with a thump. Apparently, slouching had tipped the bag just enough forward for the damn thing to fall out. A heavy breath escaped Jason’s lips. No way was he going to be able to pick that up. He supposed he was going to have a heavily-bruised orange for a snack soon. “Don’t forget to send Gabriel a little something, at least,” he said. “Hell knows Alex is going to forget to thank the pack for this.”

Jason clutched the bags to his chest, the orange rolling about as the elevator began its steady ascent. “Well, the truth is that a lot of that old story is a lie.” Some god-awful jazz melody played from the elevator speakers. “Adam and Eve were deceived, but not by the Serpent. They were deceived by someone much more malevolent than that.”

Jason could hear the discontent of his students—not necessarily through his recording. He remembered the scene well enough. He could almost see the disappointed and uncomfortable looks from the ‘good Christian’ students arrayed around him in the lecture theatre. He remembered thinking that he could deal with the angry ones later and maybe open their minds with arguments and evidence down the line.

It was the small number of students that had listened to Jason with riveted interest that he had found most valuable. They were the ones that had clung to his every word as though he were saying things they’d always thought but had never heard or said themselves.

If anyone knew how it felt like to be those young men and women in his class, it was Jason. Hell knew what he would have given to know then what he knew now. Growing up in Kansas had been difficult to say the least.

“The truth is that the God that they out there say is ‘all-good,’ ‘all-powerful,’ and ‘all-loving’ is in fact none of that. God deceived humanity, not the Serpent. That God, and I know this may be difficult to hear, is actually the first liar.” Jason could hear the disgusted sounds of the majority of his class filtering through the static of the recording. “God is the first con-artist.”