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

appallingly colorful dashiki that looked like the result of an explosion in a crayon factory.

“Ah Simon, there you are!”

Despite his age and the fact that he was dead, Haden still reflexively sat up straight in his chair on seeing his old schoolteacher. And as if they all knew who the woman was, the flies fled.

“Hello Mrs. Dugdale.”

Instead of answering, she looked at his half-eaten serving of chocolate pudding. Sitting down opposite him, she pursed her lips and pushed the bowl away from her to the very edge of the table with one finger. “You certainly do like your desserts, don’t you, Simon?” Her voice was a thick semi-sweet scold.

Haden swallowed then swallowed again. “I don’t have to worry about getting pimples here, Mrs. Dugdale.”

Her look turned stern. “Don’t be rude, mister. I was only making an observation.”

Haden was tempted to grab his crotch and tell her to observe this. But he didn’t.

“Hello Broximon.”

“Hello Mrs. Dugdale.”

“Those are very festive shoes you’re wearing today.”

All three of them looked at Brox’s cream and brown two-tones.

“Yes well, thanks a lot. What’s up, Mrs. D? We’re sort of busy here, you know? We’re having, like, a meeting.”

The teacher was so unaccustomed to being addressed with such bald sass that she could only stare at this pushy little man sitting on the armrest in his pimpy shoes. Both of these people may have been parts of Haden’s memory, but that didn’t necessarily mean they had to like each other.

She crossed her arms over her breasts and gave him the ugly eye. “I’m very sorry to interrupt your meeting, Broximon. I’m only here because I’ve been sent to tell Simon something.”

The men waited. Mrs. Dugdale glared. When she felt that they’d been glared at long enough, she continued in a slightly less aggrieved voice. “I’ve been sent to tell Simon that God wants to see him.”

God’s office was nothing special. By the way it was furnished it could just as easily have belonged to a North Dakota dentist or some combover in middle management. The secretary/receptionist was a fortysomething nondescript who told Haden in a neutral voice to take a seat. “He’ll be with you in a minute.” Then she went back to typing—on a typewriter. God’s secretary used a manual typewriter.

Haden sat down on a green chair and carefully looked around the room, trying to absorb every detail so that he would remember as much of it as possible afterward. God’s office. You couldn’t get much higher than that. He was sitting in God’s office waiting for the man himself, who had personally summoned Haden to come by.

But for what? While waiting for the meeting, a realization began to dawn on him and it wasn’t a pretty one: What if his Judgment Day had arrived? Instead of lightning bolts, crashing kettle drums and cymbals, it came via an old schoolteacher giving you the message that God wanted to see you? What if an hour from now Haden was standing waist-deep in a pot of boiling shit while being stabbed by legions of red devils with flaming pitchforks—?

“Next.”

Panicking, he glanced toward the door to see if he could escape. He could try, but God’s secretary was watching now and he was sure that if he made a break for it, she could stop him.

“I could. Now just behave yourself and go in there,” the woman said to him in a harsh voice that sounded remarkably similar to Mrs. Dugdale’s.

The day of reckoning had come. Haden sensed all along that this sweet kooky dreamworld/down-memory-lane afterlife had been too easy, too good to be true. Now came the fire and brimstone. The hot pitch and the cold sweats he’d always assumed would be waiting for him after he died. He felt like crying. He felt like running away but it was too late for that and besides, where could he go? The jig was up. His jig was up.

Utterly defeated and expecting only the worst, Haden stood and moved slowly toward the door. The image of that last bowl of delicious chocolate pudding crossed his mind and tormented him further. He’d left it half uneaten. Just like his mother used to make but he’d pushed it away…

“It’s not fair! You could have at least given me some kind of warning,” he pouted out loud.

The secretary didn’t even look up this time. She only wiggled a finger toward the door and said, “Move.”

He got as far as the door. Touching the knob, he let his hand drop, and then touched it again. Summoning the little courage he possessed, he turned the knob this time and the door swung open.

A giant white polar bear sat behind a giant black desk across the not so large office. The animal’s size and that of its desk made the room appear much smaller. The bear was looking at a white paper on the desk. It wore rectangular black reading glasses perched on the end of its fat black nose.

The desk was empty except for that single sheet of paper and a copper-colored name plaque on the right front corner. The name engraved on the plaque was Bob.

God was a polar bear named Bob?

For the first time since entering the room, Haden realized there was no chair for him to sit in. There was the desk and the bear’s chair but that was it. So he stood there uneasily and waited for whatever came next.

God was a polar bear?

Looking up, it saw him and the bear’s features immediately softened. “Simon! Wow. Wow. Wow. It’s been a lonnng time, eh?”

“Sir?”

“Bob” took off his glasses and with great delicacy lay them down on the desk. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember?”

Now it came clear—the whole thing was a trap. Throw him off with the polar bear, then when Haden answered its question wrong, a door beneath his feet would drop open and zoop—down he’d plummet right into hell. No wonder there was no chair for him to sit in: this wouldn’t take long. One question, one