The Shadow’s Child
Satire cuts through the polite words, the hidden images, the carved out exceptions on your altars of nice that keep abortion legal.
This is a work of satire. Everyone depreciated is a pubic figure, working against protecting children. Each has decided some children have less RIGHTS TO LIFE than other children. This is legally protected free speech. Stop getting your granny panties in a bunch.
FRIDAY AFTERNOON - Missouri State Capitol, Senator Hudson’s Office
Brad Hudson sits at his desk, fourth floor, Room 426. The gray afternoon light cuts through his window. Outside, the Capitol grounds are quiet—late January, cold, the legislative session just beginning.
On his desk: His Spirit-Filled Life Bible, NKJV, well-worn and marked up. Legal pad with two columns. Coffee mug from Blessing Heights Worship Center.
He’s preparing Sunday’s sermon. Psalm 139 is open in front of him. The study notes at the bottom emphasize God’s intimate knowledge of the unborn. He’s writing notes in the margin:
“Every child knitted together by God’s hands...
no exceptions...
all life sacred from conception...”
A knock at the door.
“Come in.”
Cindy O’Laughlin enters. Senate President Pro Tem.
She’s short—barely clearing five feet even in her heels. Her hair is coifed in a way that reminds you of a child’s toy, stiff and artificial, each strand precisely placed and held with product that catches the fluorescent light. Her large glasses dominate her face, magnifying her eyes in a way that would be comical if the effect weren’t so unsettling. They hide her unattractive features, but only barely—the frames are too big, too aggressive, as if trying to create a presence her physical stature can’t command.
She’s carrying a folder. Power in a pantsuit worn by someone trying very hard to be taken seriously.
“Brad, got a minute?”
“Of course, Madam President.” He stands. Even sitting, he’d been nearly eye-level with her. He shakes her hand—her grip is firm, practiced, the handshake of someone who’s learned to compensate.
She sits across from him, having to scoot forward in the chair so her feet touch the ground. She slides the folder across his desk. “SJR 33. Joint resolution. I’d like you to be the sponsor.”
Hudson opens it. Scans the language. It’s... not personhood. It’s the heartbeat bill. With exceptions.
“Cindy, I thought we were pushing for personhood this session—”
“We are.” She adjusts her glasses, pushing them up her nose—a habitual gesture that draws attention to how ill-fitting they are. “But this is what will actually pass.” She leans forward, and her feet lift slightly off the ground. “Brad, you’re a pastor. When you submit this, when you speak on the floor, people will trust it. They’ll know this isn’t some political game—this is a man of God protecting life.”
The contrast is jarring: This small woman with toy-doll hair and oversized glasses, wielding the power of the Senate President Pro Tem, asking a six-foot pastor to put his credibility behind a bill that will permit some children to die so that others might live.
Hudson looks at the resolution. Then at his Bible. Then back at O’Laughlin, whose magnified eyes behind those glasses seem to be studying him, calculating, waiting.
“The exceptions—”
“Rape, incest, life of the mother. We have to have them, Brad. You know that. Without them, we lose.” Her voice shifts—softer now, almost maternal despite her appearance. Like a child playing at being a mother. “You can file a personhood bill that dies, or you can file this bill that saves thousands of babies. Which one honors God more?”
Hudson doesn’t answer.
She stands—the chair is too big for her, and she has to slide off it rather than stand up from it gracefully. “Susan Klein from Missouri Right to Life wants to meet with you tonight. Dinner at Sapphires, 6:30. She’ll walk you through the messaging, help you prep for the floor debate.”
She walks to the door. Even in heels, the top of her acid-burnt hair barely reaches Hudson’s shoulder as he stands there.
“You’re the right person for this, Brad. The only person. Your credibility as a pastor—that’s what will get this across the finish line.”
She leaves, and Hudson shudders. The most powerful political woman in Missouri asked him for a favor. This bill could lead somewhere—it could change his life.
He goes back to his notes. He stands there. He crosses out, “from conception.” Almost as if someone takes his hand, and in a shaky hand, writes, “carved out with exceptions for rape, incest, and medical necessity.”
He stood there shaking, took a deep breath, and shook it off.
The spirit of the Lord must have come over me.
In the spiritual realm, a brass head materializes. It stands on an ivory collar, carved from an onyx square plinth. One whispers: “The small and holy often serve us best. They have much to prove.”
The principality men had once called Moloch—before they forgot his name, before they learned softer words—extended one bronze hand over the black stained altar. The surface was an oil slick, tar bubbled, sulphuric gases permeated the air around the altar.
Clouds and toxins flowed and billowed around Moloch’s body and feet, but never touched him. Nothing touched him. His body was burning orange and reds—hot brass and bronze colors. He stood naked before his altar, his metallic wings shredded and torn.
The chamber for his sacrifices occupied no single place. It was the space behind the legislative hall in every capitol and every clinic and every restaurant table—it was a throne room built from accumulation, from a million small submissions and compromises over millennia.
Next to Moloch, stood a being of pure light. Its muscles were tense, its sword drawn and it waited to deliver divine justice only an inch from Brad Hudson’s throat. The angel had stood there seven years. The blade burned white and steady and did not waver.
Hudson knelt before Moloch’s altar, though his body sat cutting salmon. His hands—manicured, professional—held something small. A newborn. The child writhed in his grip, and across its skin, burning like a fresh brand, ran the words of SJR33.
He was submitting the senate joint resolution to committee with his name on it.
Letter by letter, brand by brand.
We oppose Amendment 3. We support exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother.
The text wrapped around tiny limbs, crossed the chest, covered the face in characters that seared as they formed.
The child screamed, writhing, pulling away.
Hudson didn’t hear it. Couldn’t hear it. He submitted the bill. He submitted the child to its agony on Moloch’s altar. Moloch watched as the child and the bill were consumed in the hot tar. As the child’s flesh seared, bones turned to ash, the child’s soul flashed red.
Later that night, Brad Hudson met Susan Klein at the Sapphire Restaurant. It was a popular location because of its view of the capitol building, but it only had a 3.5 star rating. It gave many of the rural Representatives and Senators a sense of class and elegance.
Susan was an older woman, a candle outside of a container who had melted down past her wick. Age had left her shapeless, a face lost among skin, skin lost among causes.
Currently, he was eagerly nodding at something Susan Klein said about messaging. His weak chin never struggled to nod in agreement.
“In order to pass this bill, the personhood bill must be stopped. We can’t allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good.”
“Amen.”
He picked up his knife. Cut into the salmon.
In the spiritual world, the knife sliced into a new child.
In the spiritual world, he was a congregant in an inverted Eucharist. When Susan spoke about her liturgy of exceptions, rationalism, and compromise, she was echoed by the perverse priests of Moloch.
“You break this body for your law.”
”You do this to be remembered.”
“You surrender God’s good for your good.”
And every “Amen,” was Hudson’s participation with Moloch’s perverse sacrament.
Hudson’s blade passed through the infant’s abdomen. Clean. Precise. Professional. Hudson lifted a piece of salmon to his mouth. In the chamber, he lifted a fragment of the child, text still burning on the flesh: *We oppose Amendment 3.*
He chewed. Swallowed. Cut another piece.
Bit down.
The flesh was hard. Calcified. It cracked against his palate—wrong texture, wrong resistance, wrong everything.
Pain exploded in his gums. Sharp. Immediate. He tasted copper flooding his mouth.
Blood.
Hudson grimaced, touching tongue to palate. His gumline was bleeding where the hardened flesh had cut. He swallowed quickly, reached for water, swished. The water in his glass turned faintly pink.
In the spiritual world, the child’s hardened flesh had opened a wound. Hudson’s blood mixed with the child’s blood in his mouth. The consumption—in a state of unrepentant sin, without examination, without confession, without discernment—brought its own condemnation.
He who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself.”
The angel smiled.
Seven years of expressionless watching, and now—a smile. Not cruel. Knowing. A judgment had manifested. Hudson had condemned himself through the very act of consumption. The bleeding wasn’t inflicted from outside. It was a consequence flowing from within.
His own blood crying out for the sake of the child.
Moloch looked up. Bronze eyes registered the blood. He wanted Hudson’s blood, but it was too soon. He saw the angel’s smile, the breach in the pattern. His passive stare disappeared—alarm—before settling back into ancient patience.
Nothing. The ritual must continue. The priest was too far gone. The system would continue.
But the angel had smiled.
And the wound remained.
Hudson wiped his mouth with his napkin. The bleeding slowed. He picked up his fork.
“You were saying about the Florida strategy?” he asked Susan.
His dull knife moved through the child again. Another cut. Another fragment. Each piece was consumed unworthily. Each bite deepened the condemnation. Each swallow sealed Moloch’s judgment.
The text kept burning into flesh as it separated:
We support exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother.
Cut. Chew. Damned.
We will remove police reports and allow all medical exceptions.
Bite. Chew. Cursed.
Hudson and Susan Klein talked about poll numbers. About Florida and South Dakota. About keeping the messaging consistent. He ate methodically, fork and knife working in rhythm.
In the spiritual world, he dismembered the child piece by piece. The knife never stopped. The fork lifted each fragment to his mouth. The text seared deeper with each cut.
The salmon was fragrant for a mediocre restaurant.
In Moloch’s chamber, the child’s flesh burned in the boiling black oil and sulfur.
By the time he’d finished the salmon, the child was gone. Consumed. Every fragment bearing the words of SJR33, every piece offered to Moloch through the act of eating, of partaking in the sacrifices offered to demons.
Susan made a joke about the abortion abolitionist extreme positions and Hudson laughed. “Can you imagine what would happen to the prolife movement without the adults at the table?” She said, giggling. Her wine spilt down her formless face.
“Those diehards are going to kill more babies,” he guffawed back.
Hudson then wiped his mouth with his napkin. In the spiritual world, the cloth came away red.
“That was excellent,” he said to Susan Klein.
She smiled. “I’m so glad we could coordinate this. National’s really pleased with the strategy. I hear Trump has been looking for people in Missouri to help him stop Personhood bills. He likes to pay back his friends.”
Hudson smiled and felt himself shake in the spirit again. Glee filled him.
“I would like that very much.”
They shook hands across the table. In the spiritual world, another infant appeared in his grip. Smaller. The handshake itself created the offering. Text already forming on skin: We must be strategic. We must be wise. We must let the states decide. No national bans.
He placed this one on the altar directly when he wiped his hands on his pants. Moloch’s hand closed. The child came apart. And the body flashed red, a loud boom sounding across the hellish chamber like artillery.
Hudson paid the check. He drove home thinking about tomorrow’s schedule, about the talking points he needed to refine, about November and victory. The angel’s sword moved closer as he drove home. The angel was blindingly bright in the night’s darkness as he headed back to Southwest Missouri.
Midnight. Home.
His wife kissed him at the door. “How was dinner?”
“Good. Productive. Think we’ve got everyone aligned for November.”
“That’s wonderful.” She touched his face. “You look tired.”
“Long day.” He headed upstairs.
In the bathroom, he squeezed toothpaste onto his brush. Started brushing. Upper right molars, working his way around.
In the spiritual world, fragments of the child were lodged between his teeth.
Small pieces. Flesh with text burned into it.
We oppose Amendment 3.
Stuck between the bicuspids.
We support exceptions.
Caught in the gaps.
He brushed. The stiff bristles worked the fragments loose. Each bristle was a spine, digging into his weak flesh.
For rape, incest, and life of the mother.
He spit into the sink. The water was mixed with toothpaste and spit in the bathroom.
In the spiritual world, it ran red with fragments of branded flesh swirling toward the drain.
He brushed more. Thorough. He’d always been thorough about oral hygiene.
We protect the reasonable middle ground.
Another fragment dislodged. Spit. Rinse.
Personhood bills will ban IVF.
The bristles scraped it free from between his lower incisors. Spit. Rinse.
He reached for the floss. Tore off a length. Worked it between his teeth, careful, methodical.
In the spiritual world, each motion of the floss pulled fragments of the child from between his teeth. Tiny pieces of flesh, each one tattooed with words that still burned, searing his mouth, destroying his teeth.
We must be strategic.
Floss. Extract. Discard.
We have to win elections.
Floss. Extract. Discard.
The fragments fell into the sink. In the shadowlands, nothing. Just normal flossing.
In the spiritual world, pieces of the child he’d consumed at dinner collecting in the basin, text glowing faintly before washing down the drain.
He rinsed one final time. Examined his teeth in the mirror. Clean. Professional. He prided himself on good dental hygiene.
In the spiritual world, his mouth was full of missing teeth, his sockets on fire. Tar spittle dripped from the corner of his mouth.
The angel’s blade had not moved from his throat. Not during dinner. Not during the brushing. Not during the flossing. The angel watched Hudson remove the last fragments of the child from his mouth and send them down the drain, and the sword stayed perfectly still, three inches from the carotid. Patiently the angel waited. Judgment would come.
Hudson dried his face. Changed into pajamas. Climbed into bed next to his wife.
“Night, honey,” he said kissing her in the shadowlands and spiritual world.
“Night.”
He fell asleep in seconds. Exhausted but satisfied. The day had been good. The strategy was working. November would be a victory.
In the spiritual world, Moloch’s altar glowed with the residue of the offering. The children were completely consumed.
The text of SJR33 had been seared into delicate flesh, dismembered with a dinner knife, extracted piece by piece with brush and floss, and washed down a drain in a suburban Missouri bathroom.
And Brad Hudson slept clean in the shadowlands, blood-soaked in the realm where angels kept watch.
The angel did not lower the blade.
The child was gone.
But November would bring more.
Moloch waited.
The altar was never empty for long. Other senators in other states were lining up in Florida, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Montana.
SUNDAY MORNING
The baptism was scheduled for the 11 AM service. The Johnsons’ oldest child had made a profession of faith last month. The whole extended family was beaming in the front row.
Hudson stood in the baptismal waters, hands raised high. The same hands that had held SJR 33. The same hands that had cut salmon. The same hands that had brushed fragments from his teeth.
“Dearly beloved,” he began, “we are gathered to witness the baptism of Emma Grace Johnson into the family of God.”
The congregation smiled.
Hudson helped Emma step into the water. She was barely eight years old. Her hair was braided high on her head. She was wearing a white robe. Her eyes wide and trusting.
He looked down at her. “Emma Grace. Do you accept Jesus Christ as your savior?”
Her voice was small and didn’t carry loudly enough for anyone to hear.
Hudson smiled. “Can you say that louder, dear?”
The crowd chittered gently.
“Yes!” She blurted out.
“Then, Emma Grace, I baptize you in the name of the Father—”
In the spiritual world, fragments of the child he’d consumed at dinner still clung to his hands. The branded flesh burned faintly between his fingers. In the spiritual world, his fingers began to stain the water.
“—and of the Son—”
He immersed her under the water.
“—and of the Holy Spirit.”
The water received the child. Hudson’s hands held the girl under. One second. Two. A whisper—dark, familiar: “Just a little longer. Just a little more. You know how it feels. You’ve done it before.”
His hands wanted to push down. Wanted to hold under. Wanted to—
He lifted the child quickly. Water streamed from Emma’s face. She gasped, crying. The sweet moment almost ruined. The parents and family smiled. Children often cry after being immersed.
The congregation didn’t notice the extra second. The congregation didn’t see his hands trembling.
But where his hands had touched the water, it ran slightly pink.
In the spiritual world, the baptismal carried traces of the child from dinner. The text still burning. The condemnation still flowing.
Hudson hugged Emma’s side. His fingers left faint marks on her shoulder—not water, but something darker. Something that no one would notice in the shadowlands.
“I present to you Emma Grace Johnson, baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
The Johnsons received their daughter back and the church applauded politely, reverently, as practiced.
Hudson’s hands were clean in the shadowlands. Manicured and political, pastoral and maneuvering.
In the spiritual world, the angel’s sword pressed closer to his throat.
The baptism was valid—ex opere operato. The sacrament worked regardless of the minister’s state.
But Hudson stood condemned.
Same hands. Both altars. The angel watched. The sword did not waver.
After the baptism, Hudson taught the congregation the importance of life, protecting against extremists, radicals—like those who supported the personhood bills and amendments. If they did not act now to save lives, then all would be lost.
Abolition for abortion would never work. Exceptions must be made. Life was too precious to risk on a gamble. We must protect the vulnerable. We must stand firm for reproductive rights.
He would hold his bible in the air with same hands that had baptized Emma.
The same hands that had consumed children at Moloch’s altar.
The same hands that had almost held Emma under just a little too long.
And he would see no contradiction.
NOVEMBER - Election Day
The pew-warmers at Blessing Heights Worship Center voted their pastor’s conscience. They had listened to him preach about protecting life. About the sanctity of every child—with exceptions.
They believed him. He was their pastor. A man of God and he was a Missouri Senator.
His sermons increasingly became about saving lives, about being realistic. About saving thousands of babies. He explained how the Personhood bill would destroy the pro-life movement and set back progress.
They nodded. That made sense too. Pastor Brad knew about politics. He was in the Capitol. He understood these things.
They could vote for his bill with a clear conscience. The Personhood bill was too extreme. This was the reasonable path.
November came.
They walked into the voting booth.
In the shadowlands, they saw only a ballot. Checkboxes. Democratic process. Civic duty.
In the spiritual world, they stood before Moloch’s altar, a burning priest surrounded by yellow sulphuric clouds handing them a crying infant branded with Reproductive Rights Amendment across their abdomen.
Each one alone. No crowd to hide in. No pastor’s guidance to lean on. Just the individual, the ballot, and the choice.
The angel’s sword were sheathed.
They thought they were in a polling place. The angels saw where they actually were.
They marked their votes for Hudson’s Amendment, as they called it. Against the Personhood amendment.
The angel’s sword was drawn at every neck.
Each ballot marked was an offering placed on the altar. Each vote against Personhood was a declaration: “Some image-bearers may be sacrificed. Some may carry the sins of others.”
The brass heads, with ivory collars, standing on onyx plinths, spoke their justifications over each voter.
“You’re being realistic.” “You’re saving thousands.” “Perfect is the enemy of good.” “Your pastor said this was right.”
But the altar didn’t care about justifications. The altar received the offering. The oil bubbles burst, burning the skin of the supplicants, scarring the as they lay their oblations down. Christian after Christian came forward across the nation to sacrifice babies in the name of reason, not faith.
Hudson had provided the theological cover for his church. His sermon promised “no compromise with evil.”
His political speech said “strategic exceptions are wisdom.”
His congregation heard both. Believed both. Saw no contradiction.
Because Hudson had taught them the mental architecture that made it possible and failed to teach them that the body and the soul are interconnected, that voting isn’t a material action, but sacramental if it touches on moral issues like imago dei. Moloch knew this. His assault on heaven depended on men like Hudson, divorced from the correction.
The voting booth and Moloch’s altar occupied the same space. The sacred became profane in Missouri, Florida, South Carolina, and South Dakota. Across the nation, Trump’s plan moved forward to prevent Abortion from ever being abolished. One national fight became fifty fights and the abolitionists fractured into fights they couldn’t win.
The voters couldn’t see it. The shadowlands filter made them think they were making a prudential political judgment.
But in the spiritual realm, each person placed their own offering on the altar. Each voter chose which children would be protected and which would be sacrificed.
The angel watched. The sword did not waver.
When the results came in, Hudson’s bill passed. Personhood died. Legalized murder continued. Ritualized, liturgical human sacrifice continued.
Hudson celebrated with Susan Klein at another dinner in DC. This time champagne instead of wine.
“We did it,” Susan said, raising her glass. “Thousands of babies were likely saved.”
“Praise God,” Hudson said.
They toasted. They ate. They planned the next session’s strategy to raise money to continue to fight abortion for the next ten years.
In the spiritual world, Moloch’s altar glowed brighter. The offerings had been accepted. The covenant sealed not just by Hudson’s hands, but by tens of thousands of Christian hands in voting booths across Missouri. Millions across the nation.
The brass heads recorded every name. Every vote. Every offering.
The angel’s sword stayed drawn.
Hudson brushed his teeth and flossed. He spit the flesh into the sink. Once again he kissed his wife good night. He slept well that night, believing he had fought the good fight. In the spiritual world, he was a skeletal reaper, flaming death incarnate.
Yet, for him until he died, the shadowlands filter held. Until the final day of Judgment.
The Vision
The fiery veil’s weight wavered, flowing—lacing black hate into its burning weave of malice. Tormented figures flashed into existence, their faces frozen in twisted agony, giving the creature in the center lurid pleasure before they disappeared. Each new group glowed as bright as molten bronze in the center of this altar’s profanity.
Moloch spoke words over the altar, held up by four pillars. At each corner of the stone table stood a square carved onyx body, with an ivory collar, topped with a brass head. Their faces were stern, judgmental, and unflinching.
The sky was an open wound of flame and clouds. Each child was placed on the black altar, each unholy word etched onto the child’s flesh, “Rape,” “Incest,” “Medical Necessity.” Their little bodies were burnt into cinders.
Moloch's face was passive, as each innocent human soul raced toward heaven, inflamed with borrowed sin, an assault upon heaven itself. Promethean rods of hellfire punctured through the sacred realms, pounding against the gates of heaven, again and again.
Abortion is a sacred wound against nature, life, and heaven.
Our churches, pastors, and prolife organizations have become the compromising church in Revelation, Pergamos.
A hundred years from now the history books will not look favorable on how we ignored and excused abortion.