You were born on the wrong night. My arm is sore from swinging the mallet. I can’t tell if my face is more wet from sweat, blood, or tears. You’re the only one crying now, but I take my time getting to your table. I’m sorry, but God Himself warned us about your birthday.
The first message showed up in the sky nine months ago. I was riding the train back from a long lunch with friends when I saw it. In flaming letters, in the middle of downtown, it said your birthday. Under the numbers, in clear cutthroat words it read, “The Devil will be born.”
I wasn’t keen on going to church until that night. I was met by all the other Agnostics I knew in the old wooden pews. The priest was shaken and shrieking what we all were thinking.
You keep crying like you know what’s coming. Are you more than a baby? For months after the first message, every news program, podcast, and TikTok told their terrified audiences telltale ways of knowing which infant is the Devil. All the information was contradictory and we were left with one surefire way of avoiding your horrifying reign. We set up Satan Stomping Stations just like this all over the world.
Then came the Super Bowl. Nobody knew who paid for the second message. It was stuffed in with the rest of the bad ads. The TV screen went black for a second, flashed the number of the beast, and a deep voice whispered, “I’ll be born soon.”
The world went wild with images after that. Stickers would be stuck on stop signs. Farmers found your number cut in their cornfields. Fearful folks like me would warn everyone they saw. Skeptical folks like your parents would make crank calls to AM radio stations and spout, “Hail Satan! The Devil will be born soon!”
That’s why I ripped you out of your mother’s arms. That’s why I’m ramming my mallet into your spongey little skull. That’s why you stopped screaming. That’s why I’m covered in blood.
***
I ride the train back home, covered in blood with the rest of the volunteers sitting in the same car. Every one of us had one last infant to kill, just like I had you. We sit in silence as the train rumbles us underground. Someone comes through the emergency door. I prepare to give whoever it is the change in my pocket, as I’ve always done when asked by those who beg.
I put out my hand and shake my offering.
“Put that money away, my man. This is free!” The man hands me a cold tall beverage from his cooler and exits out of the other emergency door.
The black can has a red head with yellow horns as a bright and striking logo. In sharp sword-like letters it reads, “The Devil,” under it in smaller dagger-like blades, “Energy Drink” and in even smaller needle-like letters under it reads, “We warned you.”
***
You will haunt me all my life. I keep that damned drink frigid in my fridge to remind me what I’ve done, what they did, and what you’ll never do, whatever that would’ve been. Just like you, that company died before it could walk. Even their clever marketing tactics couldn’t get the sickening taste out of the mouths of the public. I watch the children born a minute after you play in the park outside of my window, and weep.