Soup Kitchen

The Soup Kitchen is a campfire story about a crazed lunch lady named Helga Chopman. This story is a collaboration between myself and a member of this website named Pete.

Now, gather round kids and listen to the next terrible tale. Throw another log on the fire while I regale you with the grisly legend of Helga “The Soup” Chopman.

Ms. Chopman was a stout, middle-aged woman who worked at this Summer camp back in the 1950′s. She was in charge of the cafeteria and ruled it like a tyrant. She kept all of the meat and vegetables for herself and the only thing she would serve to the kids was soup. Rumors quickly spread around the camp that she was insane and many children believed that she made her soup with ingredients she found fermenting in the bottom of garbage cans.

Sometimes they would find stray bits of rubbish floating in their soup. One day, a boy found a cow’s eyeball floating in his soup. When he brought it up and showed it to her, Helga just laughed.

“Why, that ain’t nothing,” she bellowed. “That’s like one of them surprise gifts you find in a box of breakfast cereal. It’s time you kids toughened up.”

With that, she grabbed the boy by the nose, shoved the eyeball into his mouth and forced him to swallow it whole.

On another occasion, a girl was just about to take a mouthful of soup, when she happened to glance down at her spoon and got the shock of her life. Sitting on the end of it was a severed finger. When she complained, Mrs Chopman was indignant and tried to convince her it was just a hotdog.

Whoever heard of a hotdog that came complete with a knuckle and a fingernail?

Naturally, the ruse didn’t work and the children were convinced that she had finally snapped and murdered one of the campers. The fact that the camper in question was missing didn’t help matters and one boy claimed he had seen Helga out back of the cafeteria, washing blood off her apron.

Now, most people don’t know this, but the spirit of self-preservation is especially strong in young children. Fearing that they would be the next item on the menu, all of the campers huddled together and discussed what they should do. In the heat of the moment, their terror overwhelmed their better judgement. Hollering at the top of their lungs, they rushed into the kitchen and attacked old Helga. She put up a brave fight, cracking one or two young boys over the head with her soup ladle and crushing the nose of a girl with her voluminous bosom, but in the end, it was no use.

The kids may not have been strong individually, but as a group, they were too powerful to resist. Before she knew it, they had picked Ms. Chopman up and tossed her into a huge vat of soup she had been cooking. The poor woman was boiled alive. By the time the soup was finished, there was nothing left of Helga Chopman but a pair of skeletal legs sticking out of a soiled pair of extra-large granny panties.

Of course, when the camp director found out what had happened, the police were called and all of the children who had taken part in the murder were promptly arrested and sent to the electric chair. At that time, capital punishment for children was still legal in the state and the kids were housed in separate cells on death row.

When one little girl was asked what she would like for her last meal, she scrawled a note on a piece of paper and handed it to the warden.

It read: “Not Soup.”

If only the police had taken the time to do a little digging in the yard behind the soup kitchen, they would have unearthed 16 small skeletons they could have brought in for questioning.

Instead, Helga’s secret lay buried for more than 20 years. The children were executed one by one over the course of 24 hours.

Just as the executioner was about to throw the switch, one little boy yelled out, “At least i’ll never have to eat another bowl of soup! I regret nothing!”

Then, the electricity coursed through his veins as his brains were fried and his head burst into flames.

When night had fallen, all but one of the children had been executed and the warden decided to take a break.

The last little girl was sitting in the electric chair with electrodes connected to her temples. She twiddled her thumbs impatiently and said, “Come on, let’s get this over with. Only God can judge me, and one thing I know for sure is they don’t serve soup in Heaven!”

Years later, a group of boys were gathered around a campfire just like this one, telling scary stories. One of them recounted the legend he had heard about Helga “Soup” Chopman. It was said that if you went into the soup kitchen at midnight and chanted her name three times, she would return to exact her revenge.

That night, the boys decided to sneak into the kitchen and test the legend. One of the boys chanted Helga’s name, but nothing happened. He got hungry and went into the storage room to make himself a snack. When he didn’t return after a few minutes, his friends went to investigate. They were confronted by a gruesome sight.

The boy’s head had been hacked off and his body lay in a pool of blood on the floor. His fingers and toes had been nibbled off and, on the wall, written in blood was a message that read: “EAT YOUR VEGETABLES”

The other boys fled in terror and, for the rest of their lives, they ate nothing but vegetables.

That was 10 years ago so if you don’t want to end up like that unfortunate boy I suggest you eat your vegetables.