Glenda III

     Dan's snores filled the night air.

     Jeff couldn't sleep. It wasn't the raucous snoring that irritated him as much as it was the ingrained screams he'd earlier heard. He huffed an expelled gasp of soured air, reached for a side situated stub of stick and threw it at his friend. Jeff stirred, quieted and resumed snoring.

     Jeff pictured an imaginary victim. He saw himself flying across the wide chasm of canyon in the dark using internal radar to orientate his direction. He carried a laser weapon of 1000 volts of light beam's charge. He saw the violator from a distance of one half mile through his night seeing infrared goggles. His victim was cringed back in torrid fear, screaming her lungs out to the silent stars overhead.

     No hesitation. With pent up rage, undeterred by speculative processing to the suspect's benefit, Jeff shot from the hip while fully in flight. The green laser traveled the speed of light, 186 k miles per second, found its mark with a Pale Rider's vindication.

     A burst of raw yellow light eerily cast in twenty feet of radii, illuminating the girl victim's facial shock.

     He had not realized the moment of having fallen asleep.

     Jeff awoke to a terrifying scream. it sprung with explosive force through the ear closest to his supposedly sleeping friend hitting his chest like a sonic boom.

     "Get offa me!" Dan struggled beneath a huge, hulking form. It had a wide breadth of shoulder's span. Bear like claws had Dan pinned down ripping at his chest and pushing for a suffocation's hold on his throat.

     "Your corpse or your soul, human vermin. I must have your abode. Let me in. Submit

or die. Yield to me . . . !"

     "Get off my friend, asshole!" Jeff shouted mindlessly at the creature. The air reeked of sulfur and burned ash. He sensed whatever the thing was, it must be demonic. A denizen and visitor from hell itself. He was scared, yet love for his friend spawned a rage of indignation. He ripped the zipper of his sleeping bag with sheer adrenaline empowered strength. In two bounds he jumped on the offenders back.

     "I command you, in the name of Jesus the Christ to leave us alone!" The imperative came spontaneously out of Jeff's deepest inner being which surprised him. His nostrils filled with rancid odor akin to pork's lard.

     The creature momentarily loosened its grip on Dan, stunned. With a shudder of mind boggling strength it arched its feathery back in elastic reflex hurling Jeff skyward like a flicked poker card.

     Jeff landed ten feet away onto a rotten log, stunned and humiliated. He found his senses from concussion's impact, lifted his head astonished toward the scene of attack. He wondered about the thing. "Could it be the Moth man?"

     It was cloaked in heavy thick feathers, like leather, resembling hair. Its orbs of red eyes were each a fist's diameter. It had Dan pinned down with its right arm and sat atop the young man's chest. Its left arm extended toward Jeff with a pointed index claw. "You too are mine. Stupid child of God, you have no faith. No power ov . . . er . . . !"

      Jeff attempted to stand but was lifted up by an unseen force like a strong, invisible hand. He prayed inwardly. "Please God. Heavenly Father. We need your help!"

     The air burst with the light of a quasar. It filled with static electricity. His hair stood on end. The landscape was bathed in light as if a military flare had burst above them revealing a central figure onto the stage of this mountain slope. It was a light being. A messenger. An angelic being. There was no doubt about it. Jeff had never seen an angel, yet instinct confirmed it to him.

     The angel shot a quick look at Jeff filling him with calm. It then lifted its sword upward and thrust it to and through the feathery creature. It screamed in mortal's pain yet the wound was bloodless.

     The angel pulled the blade out and thrust it into the creature once more.

     Again the creature screamed and released its claim on Dan. Dan lay crumpled, a broken spent soul unconscious.

     The angel was gone.

     The creature grasped its wounded sides with threatening glares at Jeff. It muttered phrases of hateful vengeance, indistinguishable of human language. It dematerialized, leaving the scene of the crime without evidence, except for one unconscious human and the other lost in shock.