The Soup Kitchen (#46)

The Soup Kitchen downtown has been open for years, although it’s received support from different charities and agencies (most recently it’s been attached to CUPS and The Mustard Seed). But it’s always invariably dropped within six months. Despite this, the door never closes and it never has any trouble holding onto volunteers or its location. Go to the soup kitchen on a Tuesday afternoon and get a cup of soup. The broth will be cheap with hard water and lumps of powdered stock, but drink it anyways. You’ll need the protein.

After drinking the broth, leave the soup kitchen and walk down the alley next to it. After a moment’s searching, you should locate a milk crate that should give you enough of a boost to reach the fire escape on the building that houses the soup kitchen. Climb the ladder and then walk to the top of the fire escape. Regardless of the weather, the top floor window will be open. Climb inside, but leave behind anything that might be construed as a weapon. The volunteers are jumpy.

The top floor will be a recreation, almost down to the last detail, of the soup kitchen itself. The most important differences will be that the volunteers behind the counter have their mouths stitched shut and that the patrons are noticeably better dressed than the homeless and impoverished on the ground floor. The soup they ladle out here is a broth made from the tears of a captive angel lashed to the wall in the building’s basement seventy years ago over the protestations of William Aberhart. Drinking it will grant you youth until the end of your days, but the gates of heaven will forever be closed to you.