GLASS SOUP by Jonathan Carroll (funny books to read .txt) 📕

magic that was happening between them, that all he could do rhapsodize like a warbling bird about her when the two men met. Of course he didn’t go into any kind of inappropriate detail because he respected her so much. But that’s all Haden wanted to hear—her details. Where were her moles? Was she loud? Did she say no to anything in bed or was she shameless? From Ettrich’s hints and smiling silences, Isabelle Neukor was a tiger, a whirlwind and a feast in every way. Haden thought his head would explode.

It was the beginning of the end for him although he didn’t know that. Life, which had so mysteriously and unfairly favored him, turned against Haden with a twitch of its nervous tail and was never his friend again. Until his fatal heart attack less than two years later, he would only see its ass-end and never again the head.

Luckily business called him back to America and he was able to flee Vienna and the lovebirds he had so unwittingly helped to unite. However that didn’t stop him from thinking and often dreaming about Isabelle. Sometimes it felt like his mind was a drafty room and she was the wind slipping in through too many cracks. No matter how much he tried to stop it, she always found a new way to sneak in and touch him.

Why her? Why this woman and not one of the countless others he had known? Who knows—ghosts choose us, not vice versa.

Two nights before Haden died he dreamed of her for the last time.

Once when they were having lunch together she described something she’d recently read that she couldn’t get out of her mind. In the time of the Roman Empire, one of the favorite forms of execution was a horror called the tunica molesta. A shirt was dipped in pitch, naphtha, or something else highly flammable. The condemned was then forced to put the shirt on and it was set ablaze. Nero was especially fond of using it on Christians. Haden sort of knew who Nero was but was most impressed by the fact that Isabelle read about things like torture shirts.

In one of the last dreams he ever had, Simon Haden dreamt about a tunica molesta. Only here he was the victim and the “shirt” was Isabelle Neukor. He would have thought the idea of wearing Isabelle was great, asleep or awake, but his dream didn’t agree.

In the middle of the night he woke curled in the fetal position, clutching a crunched-up pillow with two hot sweaty hands. In his dream she was all over him like fire—like napalm burning him everywhere. She crackled and spat, she was fire. His pain was so real and intense that Haden’s cries would have awoken anyone sleeping nearby.

And while he burned she spoke to him. He could distinctly hear her voice somewhere, insistent beneath his screams. She was saying things as she killed him. How could these flames or torture shirt or whatever she was be a woman? But dreams have no rules—they make them up as they go along.

When he woke from this nightmare and knew at last that he was safely back in his world, his reality, he shivered down his whole body. What he had just experienced was pure terror. One of those dreams you remember a long time afterward and pray will never return.

He tried calling Isabelle in Vienna to chat and ask for her take on his dream, but no one answered. He’d had no contact with her since the night she met Vincent. After a third attempt with no luck, he realized she wasn’t answering the phone because she was probably out somewhere with Ettrich. Haden’s mouth tightened at that thought and he didn’t try to call her again. A day later he was dead.

“Would you like to see him?”

“Who, Simon?” Instinctively Isabelle slid both hands over her belly, as if to protect her unborn child from even the suggestion of meeting the dead.

Jelden Butter winked and removed the straw from his mouth. “He’d be easy to find.”

Broximon had his hands in his pockets and was looking at the ground. “That is not a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t think she’s ready for it yet, Jelden.”

“But why not let her try, Brox? What could happen?”

Broximon made a sour face that clearly said the idea was ridiculous. “What could happen? Don’t be stupid—you know exactly what could happen.”

Listening to these men talking about her, Isabelle felt totally confused. “What are you two talking about?”

Jelden looked at her. “Do you want to see Simon, Isabelle?”

“No, not particularly.”

Broximon clapped once. “Good—then that ends the discussion.”

In a sincere quiet voice, Jelden Butter said, “You should see Simon.”

“Shut up, Jelden. Leave her alone.”

“Really you should: if for no other reason then for your baby.” The yellow man tipped his chin toward her stomach.

Isabelle stiffened on hearing that. She was about to ask What do you mean? when she blinked and was instantly back in the restaurant toilet in Vienna. She stood in the middle of the room, facing a bank of white sinks with silver mirrors above each. Reflected in all of them, she saw herself and the gray doors of the toilet stalls behind her. She could not catch up with what had just happened. Her mind was still back there, wherever Broximon and the Butter Man were. Looking at her reflection in one of the mirrors, she thought again about what Jelden had said—if for no other reason then your baby. What did he mean? Why would seeing Simon Haden again be important for her unborn child?

She continued looking in the mirror, no longer seeing herself there but replaying what had just happened to her.

“Hey you.”

Isabelle turned slowly toward the sound of that well-known voice. Vincent Ettrich stood holding the bathroom door open with his left hand. He was the only person she wanted to see now but still couldn’t bring herself completely back to the moment. “Hello.”

“What’s going on,