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

Astonished by this utterly unexpected sight after emerging from the suffocating grays, the women stopped for a better look around. Before either had a chance to comment, a bell’s thin ching-ching came from close behind them. Turning, they saw a red-faced man on a bicycle that was loaded down with far too many things. It looked like he had loaded his whole life onto that bike. He was pedaling as hard as he could but the great weight on the bicycle made it slow going for him. He huffed and puffed slowly past, ignoring them.

They watched as he pedaled toward the crossing. About twenty feet from it he got off the bike and pushed it the rest of the way. Two men in gray camouflage military uniforms came out of the booth to meet him. The three appeared to know each other. Their conversation was brief and full of smiles. One guard patted the man on the back while the other went over to the gate and raised it for him. He waved at the guards and pushed his bike over the border into the other land.

“Where are we?”

“I have no idea. Let’s ask them.”

“Do you think they speak German or English?”

“We’ll find out right now.” Isabelle walked toward the crossing. Leni peered over both shoulders to make sure that no one else was creeping up on them.

While walking, Isabelle asked herself what the air smelled like. There were the odors of dryness and dust and earth but something else too. A spice of some sort—cumin or sage? Definitely a cooking smell. Way out here in the middle of this desolate, moon-landscaped nowhere, a very spicy and delicious smell hung in the air.

Watching her approach, the guards’ faces said nothing. Isabelle took a deep breath and readied her hands to do a lot of gesturing in case she couldn’t communicate with these men through words. She thought she’d try first with English.

“Hello! Do you speak English? Oder Deutsch??”

“Both, missus. English and German—whichever you would prefer.” He had an authoritative deep voice and a slight accent she could not place.

“That’s wonderful. Can you tell me where we are?”

The man pointed at his feet. “We are in death. Over there is life.” He pointed across the border.

Leni had caught up and stood next to Isabelle. “Can we go over there? Is it permitted?”

“Yes missus, of course.”

Leni looked at her friend and opened her mouth to say something but Isabelle put up a hand to stop her. “Both of us can go over there?”

“Yes missus.”

“But I’m still alive and she’s dead.”

“We know that. We can see your hearts—yours is beating and hers is not.”

“But still we can both go over there?”

“Yes, it is not a problem,” the other guard said.

The women exchanged a look. They were confused by this simple yes—why wasn’t there a problem?

“Who was that man who went through here before?” Leni pointed toward the other side of the border.

“A dead man, like you. He is going to visit his mother who is still alive. He comes through here twice a week.”

“What were all those things on his bicycle?”

“He uses them to try and communicate with her. He is an imaginative fellow but none of his ideas ever work. No, that’s unfair to say—sometimes they work, but very, very rarely.” This time the guard smiled broadly at his partner who chuckled and coughed into his hand. “Both of you can go over there to life, but you will not be back in life. Do you understand?”

When the women said nothing, the other guard added, “It will be like going to the aquarium. You will be next to the fishes but there is a very thick glass between you and them.” He spread his hands apart ten inches, as if demonstrating the thickness of the glass.

Isabelle was too excited by their proximity to life to really register the importance of what he said. She managed to keep a neutral expression on her face, heard the references to the aquarium and thick glass, but none of it made much of an impression. She was bursting with impatience. Life was just over there, which meant Vincent and home and her life again. She didn’t know how long she had been in Simon Haden’s dreamworld since being lured here. It didn’t matter though because life was again so near that she could take fifty steps over to it.

“Come on, Leni, let’s go.”

One of the guards went to the gate and raised it for them. The women walked across the border and kept going toward the distant mountains. The guards looked at each other. One of them shook his hand slowly and exaggeratedly to affirm those were two good-looking chicks and he wouldn’t mind diddling either of them. His colleague nodded in agreement but that was the end of it. This was a busy outpost. People passed through it all the time. These men had often seen odd things go by here. Two pretty women was a nice distraction but not all that special. Besides, back in the guard booth a very nice lentil stew was cooking and both men were hungry. The recipe had called for a variety of spices and their pungent smells perfumed the air, a harbinger of good things to eat. The guards preferred to think about their upcoming meal.

The women walked on, expecting anything, everything, and nothing. The barren landscape around them did not change. Life appeared to be the same as death. When they first crossed the border, both of them had assumed something dramatic was imminent: they would be magically transported to a familiar place or meet up with people they knew in life, but nothing like that happened. They walked beneath the raised gate back into life and down a poorly maintained road full of potholes and large stones. The delicious spicy smell that had accompanied them faded as they walked on and in a little while was gone altogether. Isabelle missed it.

After