GLASS SOUP

by Jonathan Carroll

  Ettrich drew a folding knife out of his pocket and opened it. With a quick vicious thrust, he stabbed it into the fine leather sofa.

  Flannery froze. “Hey! What are you doing?”

  Something welled up out of the gash in the leather. Translucent white and gelatinous, it looked like some kind of hair gel. About six inches long, it skimmed very fast up the side of Ettrich’s leg, across his arm, hand, and then onto the Great Dane’s face. The dog pulled its head back but the thing was already sliding into its eye socket. It felt nothing.

  Chaos entered the dog’s eye. The first chaos that had been Luba at the dog’s beginning; a pure form that once was and still was immutably part of it.

  When he touched the place on the couch where the dog had once lain, Ettrich found Luba in the same way he had found Kyselak when he touched the tree in the forest. Only this time he did it consciously. Then he had gone all the way back to the dog’s beginning when Luba was just-created, pristine chaos. That’s what emerged from the couch now and reentered Luba. No thought, no sophistication. Like cancer, this simple chaos only knew how to do one thing—multiply.

  Chaos evolved was no match for chaos in its first and purest form.

  Ettrich did not see its effect on Luba because he was watching Flannery. The dog was dead the moment chaos entered its eye. A living body is an ordered thing. All those cells and complex structures work together in harmony for a common cause. Drop frenzy and disarray into the center of it and that fragile sophisticated engine breaks immediately.

  Flannery watched Luba die. Because they were made of the same stuff, he saw and understood exactly what happened next. The chaos that had been summoned continued to work. When the dog was dead, it moved into what the animal had previously been and began to destroy that too.

  Everything that Luba had ever been was first infected and then wiped out. Life after life, incarnation after incarnation, disappeared before Flannery’s eyes. He could not stop watching. Never before in all of his many lives on earth and elsewhere had he seen anything like this. It was so hypnotic that he did not notice when Ettrich reached over and gently touched him on the knee. He did not see Ettrich close his eyes, turn his head away, and then turn back. He did not see that Ettrich’s eyes were confident when he opened them again, as if something significant and final had been decided. Flannery could only watch in awe at the ongoing sight of every trace of Luba being erased.

  “John.” Ettrich waited and then eventually said much louder. “John.”

  The expression on Flannery’s face was that of a child encountering a twenty-foot-long feeding python—mesmerized and appalled.

  “Do you see that, John? I did it. Do you hear? It was me who did that to her.”

  Stunned by everything, Flannery could only nod slowly. Yes he heard. Yes he understood.

  “And now I’m going to do it to you. For what you did to Leni, for everything that you’ve done here. Everything you’ve hurt and destroyed; you and your dog. You and all your dogs.” Ettrich spoke quietly but with a cold rage in his voice that Flannery heard and couldn’t resist answering.

  “Hey well, fuck you, Vince. Your Isabelle’s right where we want her now. Nothing you can do about that, is there?”

  “Nope. But I can send a message, John, and you’re gonna be it.” Ettrich stood up and without looking back walked toward the door.

  Flannery watched him leave. He also kept glancing at the gash in the couch, fully expecting something else to emerge from there any second. Nothing would though because Ettrich had already found Flannery’s first chaos and set it loose when he touched John’s knee.

  The front door clicked close. Soon after, John Flannery felt the beginnings of a faint tingling throughout his body, like the prickly sensations up and down a leg when it falls asleep. Or when you drink ginger ale and the bubbles fly up your nose. It was a funny feeling, strange but almost pleasant.

  For a little while.

  Drownstairs

  “Where are we?”

  They were running, that was for sure. The three people were running as fast as they possibly could because they were being chased by a space alien, a Komodo dragon, and George W. Bush.

  Before this, it had all been going so well. It had been going spectacularly. They’d found Isabelle. Simon and Leni had put their heads together and came up with a plan to find her in Haden’s afterworld. It didn’t work. But then purely by coincidence they had bumped into Haden’s childhood dog Floyd the bull terrier which told them it had seen Isabelle and Simon’s mother walking down the street together. They rushed over to Simon’s house and found the two women sitting on the porch, talking about Chinese medicine.

  To celebrate the reunion, they’d taken Isabelle to eat at a heurigen they all knew well and liked. When he was alive, Haden had gone there often on his trips to Vienna so he had dreamt about the place four times. That was why they could visit it here and now.

  A wine garden/restaurant in Salmannsdorf, it sat on the edge of a picturesque hilly vineyard. When they arrived that afternoon, the air was redolent with grilling chicken and ripe grapes. Perfect late-summer weather welcomed them to an outside table. The surroundings were still and almost silent. They were alone there in the garden except for a man Haden used to know who was sitting by himself in a far corner reading a newspaper.

  They ordered wine and chicken because it smelled so good that it was irresistible. Then they sat back into happiness for a few minutes before talking about any next step. Isabelle was impatient to hear how they’d found her, but Leni and Simon looked so proud and jubilant that she thought it best to wait and let them bask in their triumph awhile before asking questions.

  They didn’t get to bask for long. To their dismay and then annoyance, a radio somewhere started blaring. The peace and quiet was broken by the staccato sludge of a pop song. Leni looked at Isabelle and grimaced. Haden turned quickly this way and that, trying to locate the source of the jarring music so he could at least try and get someone to turn it down.

  No luck. The obnoxious wail continued to fill the air and coat their good moods tongue-sick-yellow. Worse, when the song finally ended, another, even more egregious one immediately followed. It was the song by the rap group Drownstairs that had been so wildly popular a year or two before. The summer it came out, every time you turned on a radio it seemed that one was playing. There was no escaping it for a while.

  “God, I hate this song.” Leni fanned a hand in front of her face. Not because it was hot but more like she wanted to get the tune away from her, as if it were an irritating mosquito buzzing around her head.

  Haden said, “I hate this fucking song.”

  Leni gave him a scornful look. “Simon, I just said that.”

  He ignored her comment. “I just remembered that it was playing on the radio in the car when I died.”

  “Whoa. You remember that?”

  “Yes. I’m remembering more and more things now. Some of them aren’t so nice.”

  That silenced them all for a while.

  In spite of herself, Isabelle started humming the tune. She couldn’t help it.

  Haden jolted everyone by suddenly shouting. “Will someone please turn off this fucking song, please?”

  Whether he was heard and obeyed, or because this was Haden’s world and he was boss, the music stopped abruptly. Simon bowed his thanks and continued. “Not only is that song stupid, but did you ever see the video of it? The group gets chased across the desert by a big lizard and a guy in a silver space suit.”

  “And George Bush. Don’t forget him.”

  “That’s right, Bush was chasing them too. And do you remember what happens at the end of the video? Bush catches the group and eats them.”

  “Eat?” Isabelle didn’t watch television so she hadn’t seen the video.

  “Yup—President Bush eats black rappers. Eats them without taking off their wrappers.”

  The waitress brought their drinks and said the chicken would be ready in a few minu
tes. After she was gone, Isabelle asked. “Then what happens?”

  “Where?”

  “In the video. If Bush eats the singers then that sort of ends the song, doesn’t it?”

  Leni snorted. “You would think so, but unfortunately it goes on.”

  The women continued talking. Haden tuned them out to think some more about the video and song. More precisely, to think about the last time he’d heard it, moments before dying. He was sitting in that car wash on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles. Three days earlier he had been fired from his job. A month before that, the woman he had been living with had asked him to move out of her house. He remembered all of these things now, down to the smallest detail. When he first came here, he didn’t even know that he had died.

  “Simon.”

  Leni’s voice reached him, but just barely. He tried to ignore it. Only recently had he begun to see the events of his finished life with clarity and real understanding. This was the first time that penultimate moment had come back to him in full and he wanted to examine it to see if—

  “Simon!”

  “What, Leni?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Why?”

  “Because look around us! What are you doing?”

  When he focused back in on the moment, he saw that everything was gone—the restaurant, the vineyards, everything but the three of them standing together in the middle of nowhere.

  “What happened?”

  Leni grabbed his shoulder. “That’s what I was asking. What were you just doing?”

  “Thinking about when I died.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing, Leni, only that.”

  “Then what’s happened here?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  They would have said more and probably ended up arguing if the four members of Drownstairs, dressed in identical white jogging outfits and askew white baseball caps, hadn’t come sprinting out of nowhere and blown past them without saying a word. The only sounds they made were the swish of their clothes, the pounding of feet, and the loud labored breathing of four scared men running hard.

  A few feet past them, the last man in white—the slowest of the bunch—stopped and turned to Haden. “You’d better get moving, man. Your girlfriend here just screwed up by humming our song.” He pointed to Isabelle. “Chaos heard her. It’s got out an all-points bulletin on her and it’s been listening. But you’re the one it wants to eat. We’re only the hors d’oeuvres. Know what I’m sayin’?”

  Haden took a quick look at the women, then back again at this guy in white. “Why me?”

  “Because everything in this world comes from your memory. It wants all of it gone.”

  Without hesitation Haden said, “Isabelle, Leni, run.”

  The women didn’t ask why because his face told them plenty. It said Trust me, we’re in danger, I’m scared and you should be too.

  They ran. The man in white ran in front of them and they followed him. But the surroundings had disappeared. They ran across nothing toward nothing.

  “Where are we?”

  Haden didn’t know where they were but he knew exactly what was happening. Chaos was coming after them. If it succeeded now, it would erase the world Simon Haden had created from his life’s experiences and memories. We are the days of our lives, the experiences we have and what we remember of them. Erase those things and what is left of us? If Chaos destroyed his world, it would destroy the world Isabelle had fled to for refuge with her unborn child.

  They could hear it coming now. Like the sound of a summer storm rolling in, they heard it coming toward them.

  Haden reached out and grabbed Leni’s arm while they were running. “Remember before when you conjured that version of me? That guy you remembered me as being?”

  “Yes, Simon.”

  He stopped them. “Do it again, Leni. Do it right now. Conjure every version of me that you can think of; every me you can remember.”

  She did not ask why. She did not have time.

  In seconds she surrounded them with Haden after Haden, tens of them and then a hundred at least, all summoned from Leni Salomon’s memories of the time she’d spent together with Simon when they were both alive.

  Kind, well dressed, funny and charming Haden. Scruffy, hungover, selfish and bad-tempered Haden. Scared and vulnerable, surprised and childlike, mean and manipulative. Short hair, long hair, dirty hands, just-manicured ones, suit, pajamas… One after the other these Hadens flooded out of her mind and memory, surrounding the three people like a rush-hour crowd at a big-city railroad station. They emerged from the ethers fully realized. Since they were different versions of the same man however, they immediately began talking to each other and comparing notes. Leni, Isabelle, and Simon watched it happen.

  “Why did you want this, Simon?” Leni asked.

  “Because Chaos is trying to destroy my memories. If it does that, then it destroys my world—this world.” He looked at Isabelle. “And then she won’t be able to survive. That’s why they tricked her into coming here on her own. She’ll be stuck here in whatever’s left. I don’t even know what that would be, some kind of limbo.”

  “But why them?” Isabelle gestured toward the hoard of Hadens around them.

  “Because they all have memories, but they remember things differently. When I’m pissed off I remember things differently than when I’m in a good mood. When Chaos meets these guys it’s going to have to sort through all of it, all of them, to find out what’s true before it can erase things. That will give you some time to get away. You two have to go now; right this second.”

  “Go where? And what are you going to do?”

  Haden smiled. Neither woman had ever seen that expression on his face. “Now it’s my turn. I’m going to stay here and use this”—he touched his temple—“to make more me’s—lots and lots of them. As many as I can before it arrives. Then I’ll just sort of lose myself in the crowd and hope that it doesn’t find me for a while. But you have to leave now. No more talking.”

  “Where, Simon? Where can we go?”

  He nodded at Leni’s question. He had expected it, thought about it, and knew the answer already. “If I do this right, Chaos will have to stop here for a long time and work through all of these guys and their memories. It will have to figure out which are Leni’s people and which are mine. Then which memories are real and which aren’t.

  “That should give you enough time to get some place in this world that still exists. After that I don’t know, Leni. You two are going to have to figure it out later. Right now you’ve just got to get Isabelle out of here.”

  Moved, Isabelle protested, “But what about you?”

  He gestured around them with both hands. “I’ll be fine. I’m here in good company. I know these guys.” He took Isabelle’s right hand, squeezed it and dropped it. “Go now. I’ll be fine. I’ll see you.” He motioned for them to leave.

  “Wow, Simon. Wow. Thank you.”

  “You are welcome. And good luck with the baby.”

  “Simon?” Leni pointed to the growing crush of Hadens around them. “I just thought of another Simon to add to this group. He’s a good man after all. And he just surprised the hell out me.”

  Hearing her compliment, Haden’s tense face relaxed a moment. He saluted them and walked straight out into the crowd. It quickly grew and grew as he moved until the women couldn’t tell which one was the real Simon anymore.

  “Let’s go.”

  To their very great relief, the women did not have far to travel before coming to a recognizable place. At first they hadn’t known what to expect, so they were suspicious of everything. There was still nothing around them; it was as if Simon’s world had been swept clean or they were at the beginning of a new one. It reminded Leni of being inside an airplane as it came in to land on a completely overcast day. The only thing around them was various shades of shifting gray, like thick clouds outside a plane window.

>   It lasted only a few miles. As they walked, this gray began to evaporate and what appeared to be some kind of border crossing loomed in front of them. They saw that they were now walking on a primitive, badly paved road. It led to a small booth and the kind of moveable gate you see at rural railroad crossings. What was absurd was that all one had to do was step off the road a few feet, walk around this booth/gate, and you would cross over to the other side of the border unhindered. There were no other fences or barriers to keep you in or out.

  The surrounding landscape was brown, barren, and rocky. Off in the distance loomed a high and dramatic mountain range with jagged snow-covered peaks. The steel blue and white of those mountains contrasted dramatically with the brown everywhere around them.

  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?”