Soup

I don’t like soup.  

You can like it if you like. But I don’t. I used to; I loved nothing better than a hot creamy pumpkin soup on a Sunday night in late autumn. With crusty bread and hot, dripping butter, and the company of my dear sweet partner. Correction; ex-partner.  

I really wish I could still like soup. But now whenever I smell it, see it, even hear the word, I tense up. It feels like the tendons in my balled-up fists might snap like an over-wound guitar string. Because soup tried to kill me, you see. 

Okay, maybe that’s hyperbolic. It wasn’t really the soup’s fault. I was running late. Because the bus was running late. So maybe it’s the bus driver’s fault, or perhaps it was another passenger’s fault. Or perhaps it was a car accident. But it wasn’t my fault, I know that much for sure. 

I had my soup in a thermos for work, with a Ziplock bag of bread and a small Tupperware container of butter. They don’t keep butter at work ever since one of my co-workers found a dead mouse inside the tub of margarine. I tried to argue that margarine isn’t butter, and so butter—and those who indulge in butter—shouldn’t be punished for the mistakes of a pale, artificially salted imitation product. It didn’t convince them. 

So, the bus driver, running late, tries to make up the time lost by chasing the yellow lights. But in the city of Melbourne there are plenty of bicycle lanes. As the light flickered yellow and the bus accelerated, a cabal of cyclists come careening around the corner, their calf muscles pumping like the pistons of a V8 engine. And then … clunk. Screech. Slam. The bus jolts to a stop. My bag goes sliding down the centre aisle. My body completes a full somersault over the handle hold of the seat in front of me, and I land perfectly upright, and perfectly confused, one seat forward. 

Then there is this clunk, clunk, clunk. I turn my head and look out the window, at the pile of spandex and rubber tires swiftly piling up against the side of the bus. And on the top of pile, eyes wide in bewilderment but turning swiftly into an iron-melting glare is my ex, Robert. Almost instantly, he begins shouting, accusatory, incredulous. As if I had some control over the bus schedule, or the lights, or whatever terrible power he thought I must wield to ensure that he, specifically he, wound up plastered on the side of this bus. 

I’m rattled, I’m shook. I’ve just been in a terrible automobile accident. I don’t want to look at Robert, so I get to my feet and rush to collect my bag. But the thermos wasn’t screwed on properly, was it? And as I put foot to floor, my leather-soled shoe finds the streak of steaming soup spilled along the aisle of the bus and makes the regrettable decision to get as far away from it as possible. My shoe, and by extension my foot, my leg, and the rest of me slips outwards, upwards, and backwards. The muscles in my leg overextend and pop, the wind kicks out of my chest as my back slams into one corner of the bus seat. 

This is just awful.  

Soup paints my jacket, my pants. Its heat stings my hands as I scramble to sit up. 

But the bus driver hasn’t noticed. 

The bus driver is running late. 

The bus driver is rattled, shook. Panicking. 

So, the bus picks back up speed. It swings around the next corner, faster than I’ve ever felt a bus go. Faster than I thought a bus could go. And then it is down the hill, the steepest one on my commute, faster than I can collect myself. I go sliding straight down the aisle, slamming my head into the disabled seat bar. Or is it seat for those with disabilities? Or—it doesn’t matter. I can’t remember what it is supposed to be called at this point, my head is woozy, my back is aching. I struggle to my feet as this bus driver, this madman, scorches the earth behind us with the wheels of his demon bus, now moving as if possessed by a devil. A devil running late, no less. 

“Slow down!” I yell. “You’re going to kill us. There is a ‘give way’ sign at the bottom of this hill!” 

“Oh, shit! You’re right,” The bus driver says and slams his foot on the brake. 

But I wasn’t the only thing that rolled down the aisle. My thermos had too. Its perfectly cylindrical form had tumbled elegantly towards the front of the bus, finding a new home directly beneath the bus driver’s brake. So, when he puts his foot down, the brake doesn’t move. Nothing slows. Nothing stops. The bus hurtles through the give way sign, giving no ways to no one. No ways at all. 

Not to the jeep that hits the front right edge of the bus.  

Not to the fuel truck that hammers into the back left. 

And I think, I know, this is it. I am going to die. 

Because of soup. 

So no, thank you, I don’t want the soup-of-the-day.  

I’ll have the salad instead. 

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