In the middle of the night, she dreamt fervently of pea soup. Lush and electric green. The soup swirled around in a shallow serving bowl and left an impression so radiant, like silk… she awoke with the texture still on her tongue. The aroma of leeks, garlic and mint swirled in her brain and slipped out through her ears. The girl was ravenous, with a hunger that left her feeling hollow. Outside, a bright sun beckoned. The city was still sleepy with untapped possibility, in the way the last few weeks of summer always seem to be. It was a weekend, and the girl had no plans, so she got dressed and immediately walked to the grocery store. Deep in the fluorescent aisles, she grabbed bags of frozen peas and other green vegetables. She didn’t even think to consult a recipe, and instead wandered the produce section with her eyes closed periodically, trying to remember what the soup had tasted and smelled like. Though she’d never had much of a liking for pea soup, she could not think of anything else now.
When she poured all the ingredients onto her kitchen counter, it looked as though a small, mossy forest had taken over. Every type of green shrubbery fought for air space: soft eyelashes of dill and sharp edges of Italian parsley. There were leeks as long as her arms and bags and bags of the peas slumped over like tired lovers. In the biggest pot she could find, the girl threw in a bit of this, a bit of that. There was a lot of cutting and chopping and peeling and washing. The girl’s kitchen didn’t typically get a lot of action. She lived alone and didn’t like to cook, and so the kitchen was relegated to a tiny box in the corner of the girl’s home. She sorted through her lonely pantry staples, pulling tape from the holes of her salt and pepper shakers and dusting off the spatulas and whisks and ladles. Inevitably, something in the air began to shift. It started to smell rich and overpowering. Onions sweating and garlic panting their unctuous gasps. The tang of ginger ricocheted through the air above her head. In the far-off corners of her mind, a small trap door had opened to reveal an old secret. Of what, it wasn’t readily clear.
The girl was elbow deep in pea soup. With an emulsion blender, she whipped through the concoction like a cyclone through a midwestern hamlet. Bits of pea-skin and potato-belly flicked onto her bare arms like tiny comets. They sprinkled her like an emerald sun-shower, but the girl was too dogged to notice. The pea soup, by this point, smelled so aromatic, it was tantalizing. From outside, there were voices calling. Reaching far into the past, even her phone rang a handful of times, but she could not hear, and she could not see anything but green. The girl was careful to sip here and there, monitoring the soup and analyzing its flavors. She dipped an intrepid finger into a verdant vat and tasted. Wow, was it wonderful! She added salt and white pepper and stirred, humming a small tune and feeding the soup a shy smile. Then, she ladled in broth, adding body and volume. Down a long corridor, she could visualize her future: bringing pea soup for her friends and cooking weekly… she could store individual pots in her freezer, she could bring it to work, she could drink pea soup everyday forever. And pretty soon, she could be known as The Girl Who Always Brought Pea Soup For Lunch. This amused her.
When the girl tried the broth a second time, she thought she tasted something quite acrid. Though she didn’t have lemon in the kitchen, she could’ve sworn there was a piercing acidity to the soup. But she stirred the blend and re-tasted it and chalked it up to a phantom tastebud. The soup was beginning to come alive, now. Slowly, it grew larger and more full-bodied. It bubbled and panted with agitation. With each stir, tiny waves of chartreuse liquid overflowed from the sides of the metal pot, landing with a dull splat onto the kitchen tile. And the room. It grew hot, like a greenhouse in the desert. The girl looked up and noticed how vigorously she’d been cooking for the last few hours. A mulchy, dried green covered the walls. She had globs of soup in her hair, the color of khaki. Her clothes were camouflaged and mossy. She began to grow light-headed from the heat that reeked of sauteed onion. The lights in the kitchen pierced the soup and reflected off its glazed face. The color was putrid, like days’ old avocado. What time of day it had become, the girl did not know. But she did think the soup could use some more work.
With two hands, she heaved the pot from the stove and poured all of its contents into an Olympic-sized swimming pool. The soup landed into the cavity like wet socks against pavement. It rushed inside with such force, the girl flew back a few feet from the impact alone. Somewhere between pot and pool, the soup had changed from a still lake into a wild ocean, roiling and churning. Within the underbelly of the crashing surf, the girl could still make out the green onion and leeks she had painstakingly cut in perfect diagonal slices. But something else had taken hold. She suspected it had something to do with the way the pepper had interacted with the garlic, perhaps? Along the way, she’d strayed too far from any recipe. The girl couldn’t help but blame herself. Under the bubbling waves, she even thought she heard a phone ring a few times before it was completely choked by a thick, pea-green blanket. Thinking quickly, the girl tucked a few cans of coconut milk into the pockets of her apron, grabbed a whisk the size of an oar, and jumped headfirst from a nearby diving board. There was an all-encompassing sensation of being consumed. A wet, pilled sweater, the crushed peas felt like knuckles along her ribcage. Their skins had rubbed off and left soggy, pinpricks of residue on her eyelashes and her lips. The soup rushed into her mouth, her ears… it swirled inside the gaps between her sentences and in and around her thoughts. It was hard to think straight. She was just about to open the cans of coconut milk when the girl heard a voice.
“Hey! Hey you, Girl Who Always Brings Pea Soup For Lunch!”
The girl, who was treading water at this point, turned to see Another Young Girl balancing on a raft made of stalks of woven lemongrass. The soup was so hot it was starting to cook her flotation device, and the corners were wilting. The girl waved wildly back.
“Are you OK?” asked the Other Young Girl.
“I’m great!” shouted back the girl. “I love pea soup!” She tried to flash a toothy grin to assuage her, though the girl was 200 degrees and her legs were scalded by soup. It was also becoming hard to tread water and use a can opener, although not impossible by any means.
“OK, well I’m getting out of here. Let me know if you want to join me!” said the Other Young Girl.
“I think I’ll stay for a while!” The girl was determined to see the soup to its improbable end. She wanted to stay and salvage what was left.
The Other Young Girl gave her a sad look over the fumes that were rising over their heads, though she didn’t seem surprised. Then The Other Young Girl gave her a thumbs up before she and her raft disappeared over the violent ripples of sage.
Curiously, it was only minutes later when the soup seemed to calm down a bit. The waters appeared to soften into a seafoam-green, once more. Light waves lapped like serene electric eels fluttering to the surface. The girl looked around like a bewildered seafarer watching the tender ocean suds the color of broken eggshells. A beautiful tea-green crest rolled in like a stroke of luck. It picked the girl up in its tide and buoyed her gently into the air. But the girl couldn’t even enjoy this, checking furiously for evidence that she could’ve sprinkled Szechuan peppercorn in the soup. Nothing else could explain why she was feeling slightly numb. Scanning around across the Olympic-size swimming pool, she tried to spot any rogue waves.
The girl hoped to keep the soup happy, and so she continued on, pouring five or so cans of coconut milk into the ocean around her. This left her swimming in a cool, light broth… though the relief only lasted seconds before dissolving into the larger body of soup. Feeling slightly encouraged, the girl decided to swim to the edge of the pool to grab the remaining dozen or so cans of coconut milk, which seemed to have the effect of a temporary salve. She was almost to the ledge of the deep end of the Olympic-size swimming pool when a sound bubbled from deep beneath the underside of the soup.
“NO… MORE… COCONUT MILK!!!!”
The entire pool reverberated, and the girl felt her body shiver like sliced olives sitting in a jelly mold.
“Why???” For the first time she felt the slightest bit indignant. She yelled back, “It seems to be helping you!”
“NO!!!!!!”
“So what should I do???”
“FIX IT!!!!!!”
The pea soup suddenly started to circle in on itself, a viridescent whirlpool. Something about the Olympic-size swimming pool being filled to the brim with soup seemed to also create its own ecosystem complete with gale winds. The storm picked up chunks of soup replete with once-carefully selected aromatics and herbs and launched them overhead like a giant, grass-colored lasso. The girl was knocked every which way. Soup came at her in all directions, and she tried her best to hold her breath. The pea soup was growing more and more viscous at this point and she felt herself being dragged to the depths of the bottom of the pool. Something solid was pulling her down and down and down by the ankles. The withered debris of ginger and onion slipped past her skin as she sank deeper and deeper.
“I HATE PEA SOUP!” She shouted into the abyss, the sound croaking from her voice and disappearing into the thick sludge of olive-green. “I HATE PEA SOUP!”
Suddenly, a gurgling sound rang loudly in the pool. Somewhere, a large throat had opened or a plug had been pulled or a pressure had collapsed. The girl felt the artichoke-green grip loosen around her. The pea soup seemed to be siphoning away, falling into another dimension altogether. In a matter of minutes, the drain in the Olympic-size swimming pool had swallowed everything with a single large gulp. All that was left at the bottom of the pool was the girl, feeling dazed and smelling strongly of caramelized leeks.