Taken for a Ride

Norbert Kovacs

Email: norbertk@att.net

Word Count: 590 words



Taken for a Ride

after Bon Voyage! from Los Caprichos by Francisco Goya (Spain) 1799


Jose saw no problem about climbing aboard the angel’s back in his bedroom. He had died after long illness and knew, as a spirit now, he must leave his body behind. For its part, the angel, with its broad, spread wings and lowered head, seemed both able and eager to take him. So, Jose got on, and the angel carried him away. At once, they went coasting through the night air high over his city. What a rush of speed! What a fantastic flurry of roof tops and towers! Could he have deserved as wild an adventure as this?, he asked himself. For he knew, though he kept it quiet, he had not been perfect in life. Not that he anticipated anyone to mind anymore…

As they went their course, the angel dove into a couple of homes and took up other spirits who had departed life that cold, dark evening. Jose turned eagerly toward his new companions, hoping to get to know them. The first, a spirit named Manuel, seemed in troublesome shape. His forehead sagging, his mouth sunk in a miserable frown, Manuel moaned that he had been cut down by his partner in business. “We were supposed to divvy up our haul fairly,” he said. “The guy had no excuse to question what that meant, forget pulling out a knife.” The second spirit joining them, Ricardo, proved a fright with his leathery face scoured by gruesome lines. “I’ve mugged more than one person, you should know,” he told Jose. “But it never raked in enough to cover my habit.” These introductions worried Jose. The pair with him were not the kind anybody would’ve liked to be grouped if they could help it, both wrong customers evidently. But Jose was taken then by a thought. He had organized and run, until recently, what might be termed “a ring in the line of sex work”, mostly in the harder-up corners of the city. A young woman, feeling trapped in its employ, had killed herself only a month ago. At the news, he had been rather indifferent. Facts like these, he admitted now, might lump him in with characters like Manuel and Ricardo. It might even have been why they were chosen as a group to ride with the angel. But what was the intent behind it since they were all now supposedly free spirits?

Right then, their course through the air shifted, and the angel climbed high over the city. Jose’s companions turned their faces skyward, Manuel gaping with uncertainty, Ricardo tensely scanning the zenith. They expected something important up ahead, Jose could tell. But what? Then the angel beneath him gave a great yell, a wild inhuman sound. Jose could not understand why the winged spirit should make it. To that point, he had not looked on the face of the angel who had kept it turned since Jose mounted its back. Now Jose craned his head over the angel’s shoulder, determined to see it and know this otherworldly being who was leading him from the earth. The face he discovered was a horror. Its eyes bulged; its piglike nose flared; its huge mouth bared yellow, menacing teeth. The hair above the face whipped apart in the rushing air like a nest of writhing snakes. Jose saw that he was riding no angel but a demon. Visions of fire and brimstone overwhelmed him. For he knew now where he was headed.




BIO: Norbert Kovacs lives and writes in Hartford, Connecticut. He has published short fiction in Blink-Ink, Worthing Flash, and The Ekphrastic Review. His website: www.norbertkovacs.net.


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