Free The Demon Senders by T Patrick Phelps

before I hit him in the head with a rock and tried to drown him. I started to move up behind him, as quietly as I could. My plan was to get right behind him, say something so he’d turn around, then, after a split second, decide whether I knew the guy or not. If I didn’t recognize him, I would set my mind to doing what I believed I needed to do.
    He was still sitting, half in, half out of the pond. Arms still slack by his side and his torso continuing its rocking from left to right, right to left. I figure I was ten feet behind him when I started inching towards him. After I removed about five feet of the distance between him and me, I saw him start to move his arms a little. Then, a few seconds later, he started splashing the dark greenish water onto his face and body. I thought that was either an award winning demonstration of method acting or that this guy really was someone that needed to be sent back. To where, I wasn’t sure.
    I risked another step closer.
    He cupped his right hand, dunked it in the water then raised it to his mouth. He was drinking water that was sure to be crowded with bacteria. And not just once, he repeated his hand cupping and drinking activities five or six more times.
    I caught a quick glimpse of the side of his face when he turned it a little to lap up whatever pond water his hand was still holding. I’d never seen that guy before in my life. He didn’t look like what I expected a demon to look like, however. He looked like a man down on his luck, maybe recovering from a long night of Boon’s Farm drinking and was too sick and hungover to realize he was sitting and drinking from a pretty disgusting looking (and smelling) pond.
    Before I raised the rock over my head, I took a careful glance around the pond. Last thing I wanted was for someone to see me walking up to an old man, holding a rock above my head. Actually, that wasn’t the last thing I wanted. What ended up happening was actually the last thing I wanted.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

    I must have stood behind him, rock in the ready position for at least a full thirty-seconds. I stole a quick glance behind me to see if Rachel was standing close by or to see if anyone had come up behind me. I was alone. Just me and the pond drinking man, whom, I was eighty percent sure was a demon I had to send back.
    But eighty percent isn’t a hundred percent.
    I paused a bit too long and my mistake was set in stone.
    When I turned back towards the man, he was staring up at me. His look was a mixed smile and sneer.
    “Put that fucking rock down, Trevor. You have no idea what the fuck you’re doing here. Drop it.”
    His voice was steely cold and gravelly. It sent a weakening chill across my entire body. The rock, which weighed no more than five or six pounds, suddenly grew too heavy for me to keep holding it above my head. My arm started shaking and my grip, jeopardized by all the sweat pouring out of my hand, lost all strength.
    I dropped the rock harmlessly to the ground. It made an odd thunk when it hit the damp, moss covered ground and its weight caused it to sink into the ground a good inch or two. The ground should have been frozen and the thunk sound should have been more along the sharper sound rocks like to make when bouncing off something hard. That thunk , for whatever reason, stuck with me. I can still hear it clearly. I guess that sound became my life’s theme song. Just a thunk . A sound of a falling rock onto what should have been rock hard, frozen ground.
    “That’s better, Trevor. That’s much better,” he said.
    “How, how do you know my name?” I tried to sound commanding but my shaky, whisper-thin voice denied my intention.
    “You and I,” he said as he began to stand up, “we’re on the same team.”
    “You’re a freaking demon,” I charged, almost embarrassed by the accusation as soon as the words left my mouth.
    The man stood straight up, maybe a foot and a half away from me, and smiled. “Mac, you aren’t really