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

find a babysitter in time. There was a seventy-nine-year-old pensioner who had not known the deceased, but stopped by on his morning walk simply because he enjoyed the communal feeling of funerals. About half of the people had eaten breakfast. Some hadn’t, and some could not because they knew that later they would be going to a burial.

At precisely 11:17 the same image appeared in the minds of every single person in attendance: Leni sat at the kitchen table in her apartment, facing forward as if she were a television news broadcaster facing the camera. She wore the black dress she was buried in. The expression on her face was calm and purposeful—nothing more. She held up a white piece of paper in front of her. Written on it in thick black, hand drawn letters were the words Glass Soup.

Staring straight ahead, she raised this paper in front of her face to give a better view to what was written there. A moment later she lowered it and mouthed the two words. Glass Soup. Then she nodded as if to say Yes, you heard me right—Glass Soup.

The children were the first to react to this vision of the dead woman. The little girl, who had come because there was no babysitter for her, immediately closed her eyes and made a wish. At just that moment she had been thinking about fairies, so she presumed quite reasonably that what she saw was a fairy in black who appeared because she’d been summoned. The little girl wished for an elephant; but only a small blue one that could get into bed with her at night and keep her company.

The little boy knew that the woman he saw was his aunt Leni. But he had only the vaguest idea of what dead meant, so he sniggered. He was just beginning to learn how to read, but only in German. He did not know what the English words glass soup meant. So he sniggered at her and the stupid words she was showing that he did not understand. He would ask Aunt Leni what they meant when he saw her again.

The adults had a wide range of reactions to the vision. Their faces showed surprise, consternation, some were distraught, and some were delighted because they believed in various gods and were sure that this vision of a living Leni Salomon at her own funeral was a sign from above. But none of these people, not one, not even John Flannery, thought that what they had just witnessed had also been seen by others. That is the wonder.

Some of them looked around guiltily, as if the other mourners could see into their heads and the weird vision they’d just had. But for the time being no one at the funeral thought or imagined that What I just saw he just saw too. People looked down or away in embarrassment, at the sky to clear their eyes of tears, or even at the coffin to reaffirm it was still there.

But what was Glass Soup?

The Dinosaur Prayer

John Flannery knew what Glass Soup meant. The moment he saw Leni hold up her sign, he turned right around and hurried away. He looked like a man who urgently needed to find a toilet. His eyes were too wide; his hands kept opening and closing into fists. When he reached his car he had trouble fitting the key into the door lock. He eventually remembered that it could be opened remotely by simply pressing a button on the ignition key.

The first thing he did after getting into the car and sitting down was to fart. Flannery had never farted before but this one was a real toupee lifter. It happened because he had nervously swallowed so much air walking from the cemetery to the car that his alarmed body had to get rid of it somehow. Startled, he turned in the seat and looked down at his ass like dogs sometimes do when they fart; as if what just happened had nothing to do with them. They’re just as surprised by the noise as you.

The smells of fresh fart, new car, and expensive leather filled the space around him. Flannery sat staring straight ahead, knowing he should get moving, but stunned still by what had happened. The rules had just been broken by the other side. Some kind of immense new dynamic was at hand. If he had known that every single person at the cemetery saw what he had seen, he would have been genuinely frightened.

As a human being, John Flannery had never farted and had never been afraid. Afraid of what? What was here that could frighten a being like him? He did not eat unless he needed to fool people into believing he was human. His heart did not beat unless it was necessary for that same reason. He breathed only because if someone were to notice he didn’t breathe, then there could be trouble. He was here to do a job and the body he wore was the required uniform. Until now he had been very good at this job. But in all of his many incarnations as a human being, nothing like this had ever happened. It shook him profoundly.

The living have their world, the dead have theirs. The borders between the two are strictly defined and never crossed. Once that was sacrosanct and inviolable to all but Chaos. It recognizes no boundaries or laws and never has. Chaos does what it wants and that is why Flannery could flit back and forth between life and death with no hesitation. But then Isabelle Neukor and Vincent Ettrich made the crossing. Much more dangerously though, Leni Salomon had crossed too and then sent a clear message from one world to the other. To those who understood her message, it divulged a fundamental fact that mankind had sought to know for as long as it existed.

Since Flannery was unaware that others had witnessed Leni showing