Until Q-Anon people started showing up in the comments. Which is why I wanted to take a moment to talk about this story, what it's actually about, and why I'm disturbed at this particular reaction.
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What Is "Suffer The Children"?
I wrote this short story perhaps 5-6 years ago when I was trying to get into a modern fantasy noir anthology. My story didn't get chosen for that collection, sadly, and I didn't have much luck placing it with other publishers. That's how it wound up in The Rejects in the first place, as that book is an anthology of stories that never quite seemed to get picked up, but which I didn't want to sit on any longer.
What's the story about? Well, the story follows Malachi, an Old Testament angel stalking the streets of Los Angeles. He follows a guy carrying what seems to be a stolen baby to a sketchy building that absolutely reeks of wealth. A cult made up of big-name executives, highly-paid entertainers, and others are there, worshiping the god Moloch. The baby is to be the latest sacrifice made by this newest acolyte. Malachi manages to invoke old laws, and make a point that there are certain lines that are not to be crossed, while avoiding an all-out war with another god whose worship extends back to the time when the world was young, and many powerful entities walked the earth.
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| Every time you save an innocent, you get a new feather on your wings. |
Ideally I wanted to dip a toe into the water to see if Malachi was popular enough as a character (and if folks wanted to see a modern fantasy setting that focused on Middle Eastern gods and mythologies rather than the usual Celtic, Norse, etc., gods that permeate the genre) to warrant writing novels about. Since The Rejects is a relatively small short story collection that hasn't gotten a lot of reads and reviews, I figured that making an audio drama version of this tale might breathe a little life into Malachi and get folks interested in more of his adventures.
Then The Q-Anon People Arrived
If you don't live in America you may be less familiar with the political movement/crackpot conspiracy referred to as Q-Anon. An extremely truncated version is that an anonymous person claiming to have/be a secret source in the United States government started dropping tidbits of information they claimed revealed deep-seated wickedness not just in the government apparatus, but around the world. The conspiracy reads like a greatest-hits of the most unhinged ideas that people have ever believed in America, rolling up the remnants of the Satanic Panic, The New World Order, antisemitic conspiracies like the Protocols of The Elders of Zion used by the Nazi party during WWII... basically, if you can find something absolutely absurd that Americans have used to make themselves feel in on some kind of worldwide secret, its DNA has wound up in the Q-Anon movement somewhere.
Buried in a lot of the various parts of this conspiracy is an obsession with protecting children. Not in real, meaningful ways like backing policies that would improve schooling, or fund community centers, or ensure that school lunch is free to all, or preventing school shootings, though. Rather, Q-Anon uses children as victims of extreme situations that are just as absurd as the monsters in most fantasy novels. Perhaps the most ridiculous of these is the Adrenachrome conspiracy theory, which posits that leaders of the Democratic Party, so-called Hollywood elites, and others who aren't aligned with Q-Anon's politics, kill children in Satanic rituals in order to harvest their blood, and then either drink or inject it in order to keep themselves younger and extend their lifespan.
This conspiracy theory states, with a straight face, that anyone who isn't ring-wing enough in their political believes is a literal devil-worshiping vampire. I could not, in my wildest imaginings, come up with something that utterly ridiculous... so I'm more than a little annoyed that this seems to be the crowd that was most responsive to my story.
Moloch Isn't The Democrats... It's Capitalism
Judging from the comments folks were leaving, they completely misinterpreted the symbolism I was trying to go for, and what was being said in this story. All they seemed to see was that an angel (which they identified as a hero) kicked open the door to a cult meeting, killed a guy who had kidnapped a baby to sacrifice it, and then left, saving that kid from a grisly demise.
And that does happen... but it seemed like a lot of their takes were that this was a, "Hollywood is full of groomers," story, or, "Yeah, show those liberal elites that God is coming for them," story. It is, to be very clear, neither of those things. What it is however, it an indictment of capitalism, the power of the wealthy, and how most of those who abuse their authority are never punished for their actions.
You know, noir shit.
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| Rank has its privilege, as the saying goes. |
I could have set this story in Chicago or New York just as easily as Los Angeles, but I chose it primarily because L.A. is one of the cities with the richest history of noir stories, and because a literal angel in the City of Angels amused me. I did not choose it to make some statement on the so-called liberal corruption of Hollywood, and how it's a godless place that's lost its way.
Is Hollywood corrupt? Absolutely! From abuse of performers, to sleazy backroom deals, to the exploitation of children, Los Angeles is famously corrupt... and that's just in the real world. But that corruption doesn't just come out of nowhere. It is, by and large, caused by pursuit of the almighty dollar. It's caused by people trying to take land, to exploit their workers, by always trying to double-cross someone in a business deal, or to get special exemption for their particular sins. The very reason Hollywood is the center of the American film industry, after all, is because people making movies didn't want to pay Thomas Edison the fees for using his camera, so they set up on the opposite coast and told him to come and get it if the money meant so much to him.
But back to the story.
Who is Moloch? As a god, he's a king that gives wealth and material success to those who sacrifice to him. In the old days this was rain, crops, and good animals, but in the modern world it's become gold, record deals, movie contracts, and high-yield stock portfolios. And people who come to him sacrifice children for his favor... but the driver Malachi is following isn't one of these elite. He isn't some hungry young star trying to make a name for himself. He's a down-on-his-luck social worker kidnapping kids to try to trade them for a step up the ladder.
It's a single, throwaway line, but in it we see a lot about the L.A. that Malachi lives in, and how it isn't too far from the one in the real world. We see that social workers aren't well paid, and that they don't have either upward mobility in their field, or any kind of guarantee on basic necessities. We see a system so overcrowded by orphaned and unwanted children that when they go missing no one seems to notice or care. We see a world where people are desperate, and where if they lose their jobs there's nothing to stop them from ending up on the street before they can try to get back on their feet. We also see that it's the guy on the bottom, the one who didn't have the money, resources, or prestige, who gets punished when he gets caught by an authority figure. The rest of the cabal did far worse than Manny did, and while they might be scared of what Malachi could do to them, they know they're functionally untouchable. They have the protection of their king, and angel or no, Malachi can't take that head-on even if he might want to.
Moloch represents a corrupt hierarchy of wealth, and those whose power insulates them from the consequences of their actions. He's capitalism, and the way that those who climb high enough in the pecking order are basically above the law more often than not. It represents everything an angel of the lord should be against, given how the gospels demanded giving away wealth, feeding the people, caring for your neighbor, and loving one another.
So, if that sounds like the sort of thing you'd get a kick out of, give the video a watch, and subscribe to my Daily Motion channel! These things are hard as hell to put together, so getting the numbers to justify the time and energy to put together the next one would help. And if you find yourself in the market for even more audio dramas, check out the Azukail Games YouTube channel where I've got 20 some-odd more of them for your listening pleasure!
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That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!
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