The Birth of Malachi

In the year of 2048, during the development of the place that would soon become Purgatory, humanity was holding on to life by a tiny thread. The world as they knew it had been completely obliterated from the Atomic Holocaust and the climate changes that followed. There were shelters filled with residents that were yearning for a return to the old days. Some people were forced to live in shacks due to the sudden increase in population in town. One such individual was a pregnant woman named Sarah. Sarah had unfortunately lost her husband due to a heated dispute with a crime lord and his lackeys. In her current situation, Sarah was running low on rations. On top of that, the water and electricity didn't work properly in her shack. Although the odds of survival wasn't in her favor, Sarah was determined to have this child. What she didn't know, however, was that she was about to give birth to a whole new brand of evil.

On a dark,stormy night, Sarah woke up from a nightmare having gruesome stomach pains. She dreamt that she was on a plane back to her home in Canada, only for that plane to malfunction and suddenly plummet into oblivion. Moments before impact, a man appeared right next to her sitting by her side. The man had a corrupt and sinister presence to him. To add to the suspense, the man gave her a light tap on the shoulder and said that he will "see her real soon." When Sarah woke up, she immediately started screaming in pain. A few panhandlers nearby heard all of the commotion and decided to help the poor woman. The group of men took her to a seedy hospital where there were a swarm of patients and doctors in distress. The air in the makeshift clinic was thick with the smell of antiseptic and despair. Sarah was rushed into a curtained-off area, her cries lost in the chorus of moans and hurried commands. A weary doctor, his coat stained and eyes hollow, examined her with practiced, detached efficiency. The doctor had also previously worked at Moulds Asylum curing many people affected from the Atomic Holocaust. 

"It's time," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. "However, we may have to use unconventional means to get it out."

The doctor first asked Sarah for consent in performing a surgery that can be possibly get the baby out without harming it. With no hesitation, she replied with a resounding "YES!" He then gathered two assistants from the clinic, put Sarah on a gurney, and rolled her into an emergency room. With a fair amount of confidence, the doctor administered some anesthesia to Sarah and began to cut her stomach open in order to bring her newborn into the world. Something was horribly wrong, however. Sarah's eyes were wide open and sweat was pouring down her forehead. Despite all of the safety measures taken, the anesthetic was not working for some strange reason. Sarah laid there helplessly as she cried and hollered in silence through the unimaginable pain of the C-section. In those moments of pure pain and agony, Sarah’s mind raced back to the man on the plane, his promise hanging in the air like a poison. "See you real soon." As the final, searing cut was made. A strange silence fell over the emergency room, broken only by the frantic beeping of a monitor and the drip of Sarah’s sweat onto the steel table. The doctor reached in, his hands moving with a surgeon’s precision, but his face was a mask of growing dread. He pulled the child free. It was a boy. But he did not cry. He did not gasp. He simply was.

The doctor held him up, the tiny body slick with blood and amniotic fluid. The infant’s eyes were open—a deep, unsettling black that seemed to absorb the dim, flickering light of the operating lamp. He looked not at the doctor, not at his writhing mother, but past them, at the stained curtain as if he could see through it, through the walls, to the broken world waiting outside. One of the assistants made the sign of the cross. The other took an involuntary step back, knocking a tray of instruments to the floor with a deafening clatter. A giant bolt of lightning flashed outside the hospital and all of the lights surged in an instant. In the complete darkness, several blood-curdling screams could be heard inside and outside the emergency room along with the snapping and tearing of bones and human flesh. A few moments later, the lights would suddenly turn back on. Sarah, through the haze of her torture, turned her head and saw nothing but carnage. The room was covered in blood as the doctor and his two assistants were viciously murdered. The doctor appeared to have been stabbed multiple times along with having his head decapitated. Meanwhile, the two assistants seemingly had their eyes gouged out and their throat slit open. In the midst of all the terror around her, Sarah saw her son. And in those ancient, knowing eyes, she saw the man from the plane. The same corrupt presence, the same sinister promise, now swaddled in flesh and bone. The nightmare had not ended; it had been born. 

The silent infant crawled towards his mother and gave her a kiss on the forehead; the lights would then flicker giving the little demon enough time to vanish without a trace. On the table, Sarah stared at the ceiling in complete confusion and disbelief. The phantom pain of the surgery was eclipsed by a deeper, more fundamental horror. The man’s promise had been kept. He was here. And he was hungry....