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

was a high screech of brakes and then that horrifying, instantly recognizable sound of something being hit by a car.

It came from in front of them on the busy Linke Wienzeile. A man in a hurry and absorbed in a conversation on his cell phone stepped out between parked cars without looking and was immediately struck by a gigantic yellow moving van from Holland. He was hit a glancing blow and might even have survived had he not been knocked back into a thick tree that was planted between the sidewalk and the street. The back of his head smacked into the tree first and that was it. He was dead before the rest of his body dropped to the ground.

The women were hurrying toward him by the time his soul began to rise out of the top of his head like smoke. Both of them saw this; Leni because she was dead, Isabelle because she existed now in this no-man’s-land between life and death where souls are visible when exposed.

It was white. The dead man’s soul was white as are all souls, contrary to what many people believe. The crows saw it too. Chaos likes birds. It likes their nervousness and paranoia, their incessant shrieking, their uselessness, and the way they shit on everything. Because birds are everywhere on earth, save the middle of the oceans and deserts, Chaos often uses them to do small errands. One is to snatch the souls from the dead before they get away to the mosaic. Sometimes a soul does not leave a body for a long time because it is lost and cannot find the proper way out. That is why vultures can be so effective in certain situations. Because they are the only bird that knows patience; they know how to wait.

The crows in Vienna come from Russia. Normally they arrive around the end of October, spend the winter, and then return home at the beginning of spring. But there are always some lazy ones, a few that don’t want to make the long flight east again. Or those that find the temperate Austrian climate suits them. Every year a handful stick around. They’re noticeable because as the weather turns warmer, the color of their feathers changes from slick shiny black to a mixture of matte black and dirty gray, sort of like bum penguins.

Three of them flew in and landed on a telephone wire nearby immediately after the accident. Crows are not quiet birds. They are forever fussing loudly; they like the world to know they are there. But these three silently watched the man die. After a short time Leni noticed them and she knew why they were near. She was unable to do anything about it however because the dead cannot interfere. She thought about asking Isabelle to try but that was too risky; who knows what it might have brought? Isabelle’s only task now, and it was an urgent one, was to find a way back to her life.

The dead man’s soul had separated completely from his body and hung unmoving in the air above it. This was always the crucial stage; this was when a soul was most vulnerable. One of the crows flapped its wings several times but did not move off the wire. The birds were watching to see what happened next. They were impatient but they were careful. They had done this many times before.

People—the living—the helpful, the curious, and the dismayed, began to move toward the slumped body to see if there was anything they could do, or just to stare. The driver of the truck had stopped the vehicle and thrown open the door, but he did not move from his seat in the high cab. Terrified, the little-boy part of him still living somewhere inside thought If I don’t move, this will go away. If I stay up here in my safe place it will stop.

The first crow jumped off the wire and dropped toward the floating soul. Unexpectedly when it was very close, the big bird stopped its dive and, cawing raucously, veered off and flew away.

“Did you see that? Did you see that big crow? What was it doing?”

“Checking. Testing to see if the coast is clear.”

“To see if what coast is clear? Leni, what are you talking about?”

From a distance they heard the sound of a siren approaching. Slowly the soul began to rise. The women watched it and the crows watched it. People had gathered around the body, close but not too close. Some squatted down on their haunches, others stood with grim faces and arms crossed. A young mother gripped too hard the handle of the blue and brown baby carriage she was pushing. Another woman had found the dead man’s cell phone and laid it gently on the ground beside the body. In a while it began to ring. People jerked as if the phone were the dead man suddenly come back to life. Others cringed at the absolute wrongness of that familiar sound now.

“Is that his soul in the air, Leni?”

“Yes.”

The second crow dropped off the telephone wire and swooped down toward the soul. The baby in the carriage began to cry and then to scream. It was so immediately loud and distraught that one would have thought something was hurting it. The crow squawked, outraged, but flew away.

“Good!” Leni made a triumphant fist and pressed it to her side. “Chaos sent those crows to steal the soul. But see—the baby’s cries keep them away.”

“Why? How?” Isabelle’s thoughts went to her own unborn child.

Leni shrugged. “I don’t really know; maybe because babies are innocent and so new to life. Their pureness reminds a soul what it’s really here for and where it’s supposed to go when it’s finished. But I’m only guessing.”

The mother took the infant out of the carriage, hefted it over her shoulder, and patted its back the way mothers do. From where they were standing, the baby was only a