Balls Capone

God's Soup Can - by P.N. Neville

In my dreams last night I visited a strange world, it looked like the 1930’s depression era, but different.  It was a mix of that time and modern times, the people were hungry and dressed in the same kind of depression era clothing, but there were crashed and burned out modern cars all over the place.  It seemed there had been some kind of major disaster in the past, leaving nothing but ruins of what was once our current modern world. 

I walked slowly up the crumbling paved road, the clumps of old pavement disintegrating under my feet with each step.  It headed up a canyon into the desolate hills, blackened skeleton trees and charred corpses of bushes lined the slopes with little to no green left in between.  It all looked long dead, as if I was taking an afternoon stroll on the surface of Mars.  The cold wind blew up the dusty scorched soil and created large brown clouds that slowly floated down the canyon below me where the empty parched river bed now flowed with nothing but thirst, contrasting against the intensely blue sky.  At least it was a nice day, it was just cold enough though to be chilly, I had on pants and a t-shirt, so I stuck my hands in my pockets and pulled my arms in close to my sides to keep myself warm.  I picked up the pace to generate some more heat. 

“Get them stumps a pumpin’”, I told myself as I walked head on into the brisk winds. 

I could see a ridge up ahead where the old road turned left behind a hill, it looked like there might be an overlook up there, I wanted to get my bearing since this land was completely foreign to me.  I walked briskly up the old road, the rhythmic crunching beneath my feet between my breaths made a little rhythm and began to sing a silly tune.

“Oh, it’s cold and it’s dry, but the sun still shines, we’ll be alright, but why should I lie, don’t even try, I’m probably gonna die!”

Suddenly a voice rang out from ahead.

“Very nice, very nice, hey, come join us by the fire and do some more singing.”, said the voice.

As I approached the top of the hill I could see an old parking lot and a primitive village full of disheveled looking people, but they were all smiling, they seemed to be happy and very welcoming of this total stranger that’s wandered into their village.  They had made shelters, benches, beds, tables, and all sorts of other items out of the old burned out cars that littered the parking lot.  It was very organized and surprisingly clean.  In the middle of the village was a large fire pit covered in big grills made from shopping carts, car grills and old radiators.  It was surrounded by benches made of bumpers, tailgates, and wheels.  Anything that could be used had been used in a productive way.  The  vibe was great, friendly dogs approached to get pets, their tails wagging cheerfully, children played nearby with primitive toys made from whatever they could find, and a group of men laughed and drank their own brew out of large mugs made from old windshield washer fluid and coolant overflow bottles taken from the cars.  It looked like a great time.  I guess the apocalypse doesn’t have to be all bad.

They seemed quite happy to have a visitor and welcomed me into their camp with open arms and smiling faces.  They were excited to take me on the official tour of their whole village, like I was a visiting tourist to an exciting attraction.  They were very proud of their place and had worked hard to have the few amenities they did have.   They considered it like a resort.  A hobo resort, a place of refuge from the cold dead world beyond, a little glimmer of happiness and friendly people in what seemed like a vast nothingness.

They insisted I have a shower, I didn’t feel dirty at all, but they said that after my long journey, a cleansing shower is always a good idea.  So my guide brought me to this beat up tiled shower room in what was left of a half collapsed bathroom on the top floor of a crumbling cement building.  On the other side of the shower room, the building was broken open, sun shined through the crack, and long pieces of rusty rebar ran across the opening like a prison cell.  I peered out the crack and could see a dry lake bed far below out in the distance, I then realized we were standing on top of a giant dam that used to hold back a massive body of water, but the water was long gone and now the only thing left was a the slowly deteriorating cement super structure here in the middle of nowhere.  It felt ominous, standing on top of this giant mass, but my guide insisted that I use the old blue tile shower.  So I did.  I got myself undressed and stepped in.  The old faucets turned with a loud creak and a loud groan as rusty brown water began to slowly spit from the corroded shower head.  I prepared myself for an unpleasant ice water shower, but to my surprise, the water was welcomingly warm.

“How do you have hot water?”, I yelled out, as I washed out my filthy hair in the comforting warm stream.

“Look out that crack and look down”, shouted in my guide.

I walked over the crack in the wall once again and looked downward.  There at the bottom of the dam was a large cement pool, the bottom of one of the intake towers that had fallen long ago and now laid scattered in ruins across the bottom of the dam.  The pool was lined with old license plates, creating a smooth edge and the water bubbled like a jacuzzi and there were people sitting around the edges enjoying it as such.

“There’s a natural spring down there, it destabilized the foundation of this tower and when it collapsed we found this pool of hot water in here, just for us.  The water is fresh, clean and constantly flowing.”, said my guide from outside the doorway.

He was right, a refreshing shower on top of a crumbling dam did feel strangely good and as I stepped from the shower there were two colored towels dangling over the railing of the dam walkway.  One red and one green, I went to grab the green one and my hobo friend stopped me, holding his hand against my chest. 

“Not that one!”, he said. 

“Why not?”, I asked?  “

Well, it’s heavy!”, said the hobo. 

“Heavy with what?”, I asked. 

“Spiders!”, said the hobo. 

And sure enough, when he pulled the towel up, the side facing away was crawling with giant white spiders as big as my head!

“Oh, gross!”, I yelled as I jumped backwards, knocking rocks and dirt down the face of dam. 

The old hobo just laughed heartily and said, “Yeah, sure are, but damn good eatin’!”

The hobo then reached out with his fingerless gloved hand and grabbed the bottom side of one of the spiders, to my horror it seemed to slide right off, unleashing a sickening torrent of milky looking liquid along with long white strudels that resembled thick noodles attached to white hamburger. which he slopped into a pan.  That or it was to be plopped onto a grill over at the big fire pit and cooked like a gross noodly burger. 

“Gods Soup Can”, he called them, as their abdomen looked a little like a big white soup can.  I was horrified, the thought of consuming spider gibs is almost enough to bring me to groceries just by writing this, I can’t think of much worse.

They did finally convince me to try it,

“Damn Good Eatin’!”, they kept saying over and over. 

So I went over to the spider BBQ pit and broke off a big crispy white noodle part and placed it in my mouth.  At first it seemed okay, it was juicy, like a steak, but then the taste hit, it tasted like some kind of gross mushroom mixed with that horrible beetle/stink bug smell you get when you accidentally step on one, the texture was like that of soft rubber with juicy pockets inside filled with that milky white fluid.  It was kind of like eating gushers, but if the gushers were made from pencil eraser and filled with insect flavored mushroom milk.  But since I didn’t want to insult my new hobo friends, I crunched it down anyway.

“Leg?”, smiled a gypsy woman as she watched my stomach turn.  She tore into the large spider leg like it was corn on the cob.  I had to leave, it was actually close to groceries at this point.

“Damn good eatin’”, she said between bouts of munching.

Sure, if you’re starving in the apocalypse desert, I guess.  You probably got used to it after a while.  It’s sure better than starving to death.  I stood there and watched the feast of a thousand spiders as they laughed and told stories of the old times.

When I woke up in my bed I thought I might actually blow my groceries, I was still nauseous from the smell, but as I slowly came out of the dream state the feeling went away.  Then a horrible thought came into my mind.  What if I had actually just crunched down a real spider in real life while I was asleep and the dream was just part of it?  I felt like there might be groceries again, but it didn’t happen. 

A strange hobo resort residing in a destitute and depressed world, but at least it was a friendly one.