Scot’s Demons by Tom Kropp

Scot’s Demons by Tom Kropp

My friend Scot was killed three times.

Scot was a short, stocky, brown haired, blue-eyed, Army guy in Iraq. During a terrorists’ attack Scot dropped prone. His P-90 machine gun chattered and scattered a cyclone of shots that peppered the terrorist people in his path. Kelly fell flat beside him, and her first burst of bullets butchered two bodies. Manning an M-60 a terrorist triggered torrents of bullets at the Americans. Kelly’s rifle spat another salvo of shots that accurately arrowed into another gunner on a rooftop raining fire down on the Americans. Scot’s enfilade arced across the bodies of an enemy RPG team making the men dance back dying causing the missile to miss the Americans. Another terrorist appeared out of the alley with a flame-thrower and Scot squeezed off a short spray of shots that drilled the flame-thrower foe. The bullets blew through the tank and the man became a flaming figure screaming death cries.

Scot and Kelly’s swift, accurate, fierce fusillades of fire bought their ambushed squad time to scramble under available cover and strafe the enemy with barrages of bullets and bombs, sending them fleeing from the firefight. But a lone RPG sailed on a fiery tail to pound the ground between Scot and Kelly. The blast impact hurled them high shredded with shrapnel.

They both died, but doctors brought Scot back to life.

Scot came home disabled in his left leg and he had bad PTSD. He told me when he died he was yanked out of his body by three demons. He said they were immense and intense dark shadows that greatly resembled behemoth brown bears and that they had colossal claws and massive maws full of titanic teeth, along with spikes that bristled up their backs and down their long tails. Bull type horns hooked from their heads. Their eyes glowed like fire looking into him. He felt immense anguish and terror as they seemed to shear into his soul making him feel like he was being both torn apart and lit on fire at the same time. His struggles did him no good in their gargantuan grasps. The demons just chuckled and growled in their strange, harsh, guttural language, clearly enjoying his misery.

Scot looked down at his butchered body and realized his soul had been snatched from his mortal form. The demons were dragging him towards a black swirling wormhole that he sensed led to the dimension of hell. Abruptly the medic injected Scot with adrenaline and Scot’s soul slipped from the grips of his captors going back into his body. The demons pursued Scot’s soul back to his body snarling savagely as if cheated of their prize.

Scot couldn’t understand their bestial, alien language, but in his mind he heard the words, “You’ve only briefly cheated your final fate, we will be back for you. You damned yourself long ago.”

I told Scot that he was likely hallucinating while dying, but he didn’t believe me. He used to be very religious believing in God and our immortal souls. But the experience shook his faith, and he became addicted to pain pills doctors at the vet Center kept giving him. He also became an alcoholic.

One night in a bar brawl, a very big, bad man attacked Scot. They collided in combat, limbs lashing and bodies battling in blurred barrages of blows, holds, throws, and rolls. Scot hopped high hooking the guy’s neck in a guillotine chokehold. The bigger man went down like a cape buffalo with a lion on its neck. Scot squeezed until his opponent went limp in his grip.

Scot wisely walked out of the bar escaping. But he only made it a block before the foe he’d fought found him. The mad man jumped out of his vehicle pointing a pistol. The revolver roared and the several big .44 caliber bullets blew through Scot’s body. The battery of bullets bludgeoned Scot down dying on the sidewalk. He flat lined in the ambulance on his way to the hospital. EMTs revived him with shocking success.

Scot told me once again during death the demons came for him. He said he knew he was doomed and that the constant fear and nightmares were driving him insane. He confessed to me that when he was a teenager selling drugs, that a girl we both knew, named Amy, had set him up with the cops in order to get herself out of trouble. He was facing a lot of time over her testimony. While he was out on bail, he hunted her down.

 Scot was wearing a disguise when he caught the Amy coming out of a dopehouse with a young white guy. Scot stepped out of the alley as an executioner and his pistol puffed out projectiles and fire in strobing flashes. Scot’s rain of rounds downed both Amy and the boy with their heads’ sledged with lead. They both died. Scot didn’t know the boy, but he wasn’t willing to leave witnesses behind.

Scot felt that was what damned his soul because the boy was only 14 and innocent. His only crime was being with his big sister, Amy.

Scot became a homeless drug addict and alcoholic.

He wasn’t able to endure what had become of his life. One day he confronted a pair of police, pointing his pistol at them. Both cops’ Glocks popped nonstop in a staccato storm of shots that tore his torso to tatters. Scot dropped dead.

This time doctors couldn’t bring him back.

Police found his pistol empty and a suicide note that he was going to make police shoot him dead. Scot wrote that he’d been praying desperately to God for forgiveness. The demons were haunting his every waking and sleeping moment. He couldn’t take it anymore. He claimed he’d received a sign from God finally that he needed to die in order to escape his hell on Earth and be forgiven on the other side.

I was with Scot’s dad when he released Scot’s ashes in the wind and I prayed for him. The breeze rustled the trees like a sad sigh and I wondered if Scot was seized by demons again.

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Copyright Tom Kropp 2025

Image Courtesy: Lenzatic from Pixabay