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

for the dead or for your own skinny, unnoticed, wasted life now that it is five minutes from finished? The proof is right there in front of you, darling. Can’t do much carpe dieming when you know that every tomorrow is iffy for you. Typically, the old people either cried bitterly or else their faces were the most expressionless as they listened to the priest talk about the world to come.

And how did the priest know? Had this man recently died and then come back to regale the crowd with what he saw on the other side? As that thought crossed his mind, Flannery recognized Ettrich and Flora standing on either side of Isabelle. Both women looked especially good today. Black clothes really did highlight the female figure. He looked them up and down slowly with great lascivious appreciation. Flora had better breasts, but Isabelle had those long shapely legs Flannery preferred on a woman. He wondered what Isabelle was like in bed. It would be so much simpler if he could just kill her and her boyfriend and then go home. Unfortunately however she was pregnant with that child, that supremely dangerous child, and Ettrich was the father. Plus unlike the priest at the funeral nattering on about the hereafter, Ettrich really had returned from the dead which made him dangerous in his own right.

No, Flannery couldn’t kill either of them. But he could make their every day misery and eventually drive Isabelle mad. Then she would run from her cursed life and enter the other dominion without hesitating. That was the plan and it cheered him. Raising his chin high, he moved toward the mourners.

Looking at Flora, he thought of their relationship and how they had met. Or rather, how he’d arranged their meeting. Like many rich aimless women, Flora Vaughn considered herself to be very spiritual. She had originally tried reading the likes of Thomas Merton, P.D. Ouspensky, and Krishnamurti but her flitty, forever distracted attention span found them all much too dense and difficult to grasp. So she settled for the kinds of books and thinking that were accessible, blandly inspirational, and appeasing at the same time. The sort of New Age/self-help bunk that said You are a terrific person even though you think you’re a piece of worthless shit. But guess what? You can be even better if you follow these easy steps.

They met at a Rick Chaeff lecture. Chaeff was the author of the bestselling book An Open Place and was touring Europe at the time to promote various translations of his work. Flora had arrived at the venue early so as to find a good place to sit for the lecture. She loved An Open Place and often carried a copy of it in her purse. The large room filled quickly.

Eventually a big burly guy with a beard sat down next to her. He was holding a copy of the book. When she glanced over, she noticed that it was full of yellow Post-it notes marking different passages throughout. Flora grinned because her other copy at home looked exactly like that, only her Post-its were blue and not yellow.

“You’ve been doing your homework, huh?” She pointed to his book. She spoke in English because the man next to her looked either English or American. He had the sort of hearty outgoing aura that announced Hiya, How’re you doing?

He looked at her, perplexed a moment, then down at his book and slowly began to smile. “Do you know today was the first time I found out where the title of this book comes from? I never knew it before and I must have read the damned thing four times already.” She didn’t recognize it, but he spoke with an Australian accent.

Intrigued, Flora smiled. She was wearing an anthracite-blue silk dress with a high neckline that clung to her in a nice way. It made her look both sexy and serious. “Really? Where does it come from?”

The big man tapped the book. “The Bible; the lines are from Psalms:

“ ‘He brought me out into an open place; he

rescued me because he delighted in me.’”

Flora sat back and crossed her arms, very impressed. “Wow! That’s exactly the whole point of the book.”

“That’s right. But why didn’t Chaeff say in the book where the title came from? I learned something else too—”

He was interrupted by a woman standing at the front of the room tapping the microphone with a pencil to get people’s attention. Obviously things were about to begin, but Flora was distracted now and wanted to hear the rest from this guy. Bending closer to him, she whispered, “What else did you learn?”

“How to read in the dark.”

She was flabbergasted and her face showed it. “Reading in the dark” was an essential metaphor at the heart of An Open Place. It had to do with learning to merge the human spirit with the five senses and thereby enhance their power immeasurably. Author Chaeff repeatedly stressed that accomplishing it was crucial to the spirit’s growth and a goal he had worked toward but never once achieved.

“No! Is that true? You really did it?”

Flannery nodded and slowly raised his right hand, palm out, like a witness swearing to the truth in court.

He introduced himself as Kyle Pegg. She thought it an odd name but when he said he was Australian, it somehow seemed more acceptable. Plus she was curious. “Do you really know how to read in the dark?”

“Yes, I do now. And you know what? It’s not that hard to learn.”

What Flora and the rest of the world didn’t know was Rick Chaeff and most other self-help gurus floating around out there in gullible land were all creations of Chaos, as was Kyle Pegg/John Flannery. It was a minor but interesting way to fuck people up that worked surprisingly well. All you had to do was make them aware of their shortcomings, which wasn’t hard in this age of guilt and doubt. Next, convince