It had a mind of its own. I served it to people and it killed them. Let me explain. Long ago, when I was a boy, my father made a special soup to serve people. It was an instant success. He called it “the magical soup” and would never share the recipe with me or anyone else. My father was a very secretive man. There were many things I didn’t know about my father, but I digress. He was a chef, not just a chef, but a world renowned chef at that. He had restaurants all over the country, yet for as renowned as he was, he only served soup and wine at his restaurants. People came from all around to eat at his restaurants and try his magical soup. I was probably the only person in the world who hadn’t tried his soup and I never intended to. Little did I know that would change.
I noticed that when people ate my father’s soup, they would go into a trance-like state and often do weird things. Sometimes even wild or evil things. In all honesty, I feared my father and his magical soup. One day after being away at college, I came home to find my father slumped down dead in his favorite recliner, a bowl of his magical soup sitting next to him on the side table with the spoon still in the bowl. Looking down, I saw a pistol in his hand! The side of my father’s head was bloody and there was a hole where his left ear had been. I screamed my head off. After calling the police and the paramedics, I sat down in my chair and wept. The police arrived moments later. After reviewing the scene, they ruled it a suicide and left me to collect my myself, as they sat there and wrote their reports.
Later that night I stood by the chair where my father had died and cursed. I wept until I fell asleep, waking up hours later. Then I saw it! A piece of ragged and tattered paper sitting beside the bowl of soup, and a letter addressed to me. I read the letter three or four times in disbelief, for on the old tattered and worn piece of paper was an ancient recipe, the ingredients to my father’s magical soup and how to make it. The recipe and its contents were revolting. My father made it clear that I had no choice; the soup must continue to be made, and people must eat it. Now I stand in my restaurant, a gift from my long dead father. I ladle the soup into bowls by the dozen, and watch in anger and horror as the people blindly gobble it up, slowly losing their minds and their souls. The soup tried for years to get me to eat it, but I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t do it. The thought was repulsive to me. I knew I could never tell anyone what was in the soup, nor could I tell how it was made. I had never had any children and I planned on having the letter and the recipe buried with me when I died.
Suddenly I heard a beeping and I looked up! There was a blinding bright light and I heard a voice say to me that I was alright, that I was safe. Sitting up in the bed, I saw the nurse talking to me. It’s time for breakfast, I looked in horror as she tried to force feed me the soup! I recoiled and shook violently. She had some orderlies come in and tie me down to the bed. I struggled with all my might, but there was nothing I could do! She sang to me as she spoon fed me, laughing at the glazed look in my eyes. “Everything is alright now young man, you’re safe now.”
I felt the soup flow through my veins and to my surprise, I felt very calm. My anxiety was dissipating, and for the first time in a long time, I could think clearly. “Wha-what did you do to me,” I asked the nurse?
“I gave you your medicine. You have been in a severe psychotic episode for the last few days and have been refusing your medication. You started rambling about a bowl of soup and its recipe, killing people and making them into zombies.”
I shook my head back and forth in an effort to clear the remaining cobwebs. I sat there pondering the words she had spoken to me, slowly digesting them. For some reason, what she said made sense. I laughed, feeling quite relieved! My heart was filled with joy. After a while, they unstrapped me from the bed and let me walk around the ward. I even played a game with a peer and worked on a puzzle, feeling the best I had felt in a long time. Breakfast came and went, and the day passed by quickly. They had given me my afternoon meds and I was feeling really good. Soon it was time for dinner and I lined up with the rest of my peers.
When I approached the window, my joy turned to horror! They were serving soup! The soup I had grown to loathe and hate! “Here you go love, have a bowl of soup and a nice piece of pie to go with it,” the lunch lady said to me. The screams echoed from my mouth, and I fainted. I woke up hours later strapped yet again to a bed and this time, I saw a police officer standing in the corner of the room.
“He’s awake,” the cop told the doctor, who had walked in the room.
“Why did you attack the lunch lady, Justin?” The doctor asked.
“She tried to give me the soup! The soup that kills, the soup that is evil!”
The doctor shook his head sadly. “I was afraid you’d say that Justin.”
“He knows,” the cop said.” We have to do something.” Suddenly the doctor walked over to me and I felt a needle in my arm and I passed out. The next thing I knew, I was ladling soup in the restaurant that my father had left me and people were laughing and eating and I was once again calm. “The patient is under control once more,” a voice said.“ He is doing what we have programmed him to do. We will continue the experiment and the study.”
“Will he ever realize he is schizophrenic and that we are trying to help him?”
“Shut up and eat your soup,” the voice said, laughing a coarse and evil laugh.
I am a local Portland OR author and caregiver. I have been an avid reader and collector of books my whole life. I am a writer of songs and poetry and I enjoy working on my novel. I live in Portland with my husband and our three pets, Nightmare, Momma and Tobi.