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

girl who called attention to herself. Yet for some elusive reason, that night she went to the dance (something she almost never did anyway) wearing a spinning Bobo.

Melinda Szep was the first to see Haden. Eyes widening comically, she quickly looked down and put a hand across her eyebrows to prevent herself from looking again. She must have said something about it to Suzy though because the tall girl stopped speaking and looked straight at Simon.

Her face showed shock and wonder in equal amounts at what she saw. Her expression said she could have been looking at a nine-foot-tall Martian or ocelots having sex. Haden remembered how much he wanted her to like him. But now her face said the only reason she was looking at him was the wrong reason. He remembered that others in the room had stared at him too as he crossed the floor. So he looked down.

Males often look down at the front of their trousers when they see people staring at them. Because they’re sure their fly is open and that’s why people are staring. Or there’s a suspicious obvious wet spot down there. Or… something. For boys and young men especially, everything down there is essential, magical, and sometimes devastatingly embarrassing to them and who they want to be in the eyes of the world.

Not much embarrassed Haden anymore; especially now that he was dead. But when he looked down at the front of his pants and saw what was there, he was not only embarrassed but amazed. His penis, or someone’s penis (because it sure as hell wasn’t his—the thing was longer than any dick he had ever seen before), stuck straight out of his fly like a wooden stick. It must have been thirteen inches long. It looked like Pinocchio’s nose. Pinocchio porn. And sitting on this thing, this dick-stick, was a large parrot.

“Ahoy matey!” the bird squawked. It raised both wings and fluttered them vigorously a few moments before settling back down on its perch. Haden felt its claws gripping his dick. It didn’t exactly hurt but didn’t feel terrific either.

Mouth open in awe, he slowly raised his eyes and saw Suzy Nichols staring. She wasn’t staring at his face.

“What-the-fuck—?”

Hearing that word, she looked up at him but her eyes weren’t focused.

He had wanted to tell her things. He had to tell her some things. That’s why he had run in here after her.

“Wait a minute, it’s a dream! That’s all this is! It’s a nightmare I must have had when I was a kid.” The realization stung him like a wasp. Of course! Bob the Bear said it before—Haden had to go and face his nightmares. That’s what this whole thing was, although he remembered none of it. But for God’s sake, he must have had the dream, what, twenty-seven years before?

All the touchstones of a nightmare were there too—love interest, school dance—and at the moment of truth, his dick exposed for the entire world to see. Voilà! You didn’t need a cookbook to whip those ingredients into a big fat juicy nightmare; especially when you were thirteen years old. What was worse to a kid than horrible death? Horrible embarrassment, by a mile. Because kids don’t really believe they’ll die. That’s why they’re so fearless. Everyone else will die, just not them. But when you’re young, embarrassment lurks around every corner. As a result, their antennae are hyper-tuned to it. Some people dreamt of walking down the street naked. Haden dreamt (apparently) of having a foot-long wooden erection with a parrot sitting on it in full view of Suzy Nichols and other schoolmates.

He found that he couldn’t move. Frozen to the spot now, he stood there helpless and outraged that he couldn’t simply reach down, knock the preposterous bird away, and put his Pinocchio penis back in his pants. But the rules of this dream apparently wouldn’t permit it. He tried lifting his arms—first the right, then the left. He couldn’t move them away from his body. It was as if he were underwater. No—as if he were encased in tree sap or school glue, something claustrophobically thick, viscid, and unwilling to let him budge and do what he wanted with his own body. He tried to turn this way and that but to no avail.

Suzy watched it all, her face going through a whole alphabet of emotions. When Haden knew he wasn’t going to succeed in freeing his body, he tried to say something to her, he didn’t even know what. Something, anything so that he could connect with her some way. To say he was sorry, to tell her to wait until he was free of this and then they could talk, to tell her it was all ridiculous but—

Nothing. He couldn’t speak—again. He remembered the time he lost his mouth when confronting Mrs. Dugdale. Now he couldn’t tell if he even had a mouth because he couldn’t get a hand free to touch his face and feel for it there.

Kids began to come up, to sidle up, to edge closer to him. Close but not too close. They wanted to see. To them Haden was a live volcano that they wanted to get as close to the edge of without actually falling in or getting cooked by molten lava. He had whipped out his weenie at a school dance. Wow! What would he do next?

Out of the corner of his eye, Haden saw Mr. Nabisco coming over. Mr. Nabisco? Who was that? How did he know the man’s name? He’d never seen the guy before in his life. Then again, Simon wasn’t living his life right now—he was living in his dreams.

Nabisco was the name of the company that made the cookies and biscuits he’d liked so much as a boy: Oreo, fig Newtons, and Triscuit… And now he remembered! This man had been the Spanish teacher in junior high school.

“Just what the heck do you think you’re doin’ there, fella?”

Mr. Nabisco was chubby, wore