The Thing-in-Itself

[Tammuz]

The prota is a paranormally gifted 18-year-old girl, living in a secret PSI education camp of the CIA.

***

Listening to music and reading books in my fully air-conditioned apartment makes me at times forget the horrorchip in my brain. Nevertheless it gets on my nerves that somebody could erroneously press the pain button.
This evening—it´s the third day after my trip with Selena—I deal with Immanuel Kant, thinking again and again of the demoness and longing for her appearance. Brandon has given me an introductory treatise, emphasizing the importance of understanding Kant´s ideas in order to stand out from the philosophical naiveness of the masses. These are Kant´s own words:
"Thus the mode in which the manifold of sensible representation belongs to one consciousness precedes all knowledge of the object as the intellectual form of such knowledge, and itself constitutes a formal a priori knowledge of all objects, so far as they are thought."
Comparing that to the introductory comments of the author can be concluded from it that the world as we perceipt it´s only sort of a dream...
—Kant distinguishes—, I hear a voice in my head, —a world of phenomena...—
I jump on my feet, turn over my shoulder and see Selena standing behind my armchair.
—... from a true world, unperceivable by the senses of ordinary mortals.—
Wow, her mind isn´t worse than her tongue and fingers. I wonder why I can see her in bright light now instead of being surrounded by dimness.
"Our connection gets better," she says, moving her lips. "But you see and hear me only mentally."
As I open my mouth to say something she puts a finger on her lips.
"Don´t speak. Just think what you want to say."
Sure. There are bugging micros and an invisible cam in my room. I could read that in Whitman´s mind.
—I´ve awaited you—, I think.
"Sure you have. Now sit down, put the book on the table and exit your body."
It takes some seconds, then I stand naked in front of my dressed body sitting in the chair. I´ve tried this by myself several times but without success. In all appearance Selena gives me the necessary power.
"Originally I wanted to introduce my friend Nietzsche to you, that German philosopher with the giant moustache, you know. However—"
"You must be joking," I say. "He´s dead for a long time."
How long precisely, I couldn´t say though.
"He isn´t actually what they call ´dead´, sweetie. No, he´s in better health than in his lifetime. However I´ve changed my arrangements. I wanna introduce another of my ´dead´ friends to you. Whom I mean you´ll make out quickly."
Once more she touches my forehead, then I hear the clattering of flatware on dishes and see six people, dressed in 18th century style, sitting around a table amid a room with parquet and furniture and rokoko paintings. Sun light comes in through tall windows.
I myself am the seventh person in this company, sitting between two ladies with elaborately draped hairdo. The other people present are elderly males.
Strangely enough, the most unprepossessing of them attracts my attention at once, a slight gentleman around sixty, hardly coming up to the ears of his neighbors but intellectually towering above them by light-years.
Immanuel Kant.
So it´s him whom Selena has meant.
Looking down at me I see me all done up in a bright cotton dress with a wide décolleté excellently showing my bosoms to advantage.
"... of crazy Marie Antoinette," a bald-headed and well-fed guy just says. "It´s hard to believe the bizarre ideas which occur to her in order to draw people´s attention to her. The society ladies then imitate them faster than an iron ball shoots out of a cannon."
"That´s how it´s," another guy with a goatee says. "To crown it all, these hair piles have such delicate names like ´coiffure à la Vénus pèlerine´ or ´coiffure à l´oiseau royal´. Of course they are prohibited in Parisian theaters because they hinder the view on the dying Lear."
Everyone laughs, so does Kant, giving me a friendly look. I seem to interest him more than the stylish escapades of the French queen.
"Please help yourself, Mademoiselle," he says while the others continue to gossip. "The sucking pig is very delectable."
I never learned German but understand all here spoken words as though they were in English. Maybe there is a hereafter Esperanto which serves all dead and is understandable to everyone in this world including me.
"You... you aren´t dead?" I ask spontaneously what must appear quite silly. Kant smiles in his restrained but pleasant manner.
"I don´t think I am. Since my acquaintance with Selena at the latest I know that I´m alive."
He takes a drink from his glass. In embarassment I equal him and sip my red wine which melts on my tongue like ambrosia. As Kant nods to one of the men, a charming guy around 40, he rises, cuts a slice of the half piglet lying a terrine amid the table and puts it with a fork on my empty plate.
—That´s Manfred von Bühlhorn—, I hear Selena´s voice in my head. —If you want you can later have sex with him.—
I prong the piece of meat with my fork and bite into it. Exquisite, and how!
—Easy does it—, I think. —Perhaps he has syph.—
—Rubbish!—
Well, in that case no syph. A German aristocrat being dead for two hundred years wasn´t a bad trophy, that´s for sure.
—Where are you anyway?—, I ask and immediately sense a hand under the table pushing under my garment and stroking my calf.
—Perfect service here—, I think. —At all levels.—
—Thanks. Now ask him about his new book.—
That´s all I needed... I swallow the last mouthful.
"Mister Kant..." His eyes are blinking friendly while I struggle for words. "Are... are you satisfied with the success of your.. book...?"
—Critique of Pure Reason—, Selena radios.
"... with the beautiful title ´Critique of Pure Reason´?" I add quickly.
Instantaneously the others stop chatting. Kant´s hit bats Marie Antoinette by lengths. Raising his glass Baldie shouts:
"Cheers to the Critique of Pure Reason!"
Clinking glasses, all except Kant and me repeat it loudly. At this moment Selena pushes my garment up to my thighs, presses her mouth against my gash and starts licking.
Just now...
Softly sighing I concentrate on the company. As the cheers have faded the philosopher says:
"That all cognition begins by experience cannot be doubted. But who has ever experienced a god or gods?"
He looks around. "Did you, Manfred? Or you, dear Mrs Sahmen?"
The others laugh, as does the addressed lady beside me. I force myself to smile, hopefully not showing the pleasure that Selena causes me under the table.
"No." Kant shakes his head. "We only cognize what is mediated by the senses, apart from..."
Selena pushes her tongue deeper into my hole.
"... such dry things like the rules of geometry which are accessible to our mind without sensual experience."
"That´s true!" Baldie calls out. "Against the spiritualism of the ancients! Against the metaphysical spook of the rationalists!"
At the same time he hits the table with his flat hand, making the glasses tinkle. My abdomen is meanwhile burning like a Roman candle.
Kant rises.
"Our beautiful guest..." He points at me. "... gives me welcome reason to announce a progress in my philosophical view."
The guests exchange amazed glances.
"I was given the knowledge of spiritual beings which cannot be realized by sensual organs."
Not even a pin would dare to drop now.
Kant sits down.
"From Swedenborg," he says, sipping his wine, "we can learn a lot, after all."
"But Mister Immanuel!" Baldie looks as if the sucking pig on the table had turned into a rat. "How can you say that? Didn´t you formerly write an excellent book against such things?"
Kant´s face expresses indifference. The flower ornaments on the wallpaper are softly undulating to the rhythm of my pleasure. I´m short before coming what hasn´t escaped the attention of the charming guy —Manfred— since his eyes are mostly focused on my breasts.
"You´re quite beside yourself, Lady von Duhm," he says. There´s no time left to find my local name funny because the first orgasmic wave rolls up, making me groan aloud.
All stare at me.
"How ordinary!" Baldie grumbles. "Is this a brothel? Is this even the salon of Marquis de Sade?"
—That´s a friend of mine, too—, Selena comments while her tongue goes on playing.
Despite my excitement I see and hear everything was happens around the table. Kant rises again, thus drawing all eyes to him.
"There is," he says, "a realm far beyond the human world, with terrible beings, so terrible that..."
His arms begin to twitch. Startled his neighbors get on their feet, overturning their chairs.
"Mr Immanuel!" Baldie shouts worriedly. Without calming down Kant continues:
"... that, if we confront them in their realm..."
My groaning increases due to the waves of pleasure rushing through me by the dozen. To be understood at all Kant begins to yell, twitching more and more convulsively.
"... we then turn into marionettes knowing no freedom..."
I also start yelling, however in pleasure.
"... moreover..."
Kant´s eyes are rolling.
"... we turn into mad machines in face of the terribleness..."
A sudden quake makes the table tremble and one of the paintings drops off the wall. The guests run chaotically around, only I´m still sitting at the table. No one dares to touch Kant who behaves like raving mad.
"... in face of..."
He raises beseechingly his twitching arms and pushes his voice to the limit.
... of the thing-in-itself..."
Now all paintings have dropped from the walls and the shaking table is almost blank of dishes. The half sucking pig is about to slide on my lap while my orgasms escalate. Two men pull at the handle of the closed door but can´t open it. Manfred and Mrs Sahmen tug at one of the windows that resists as though nailed up.
Then the glasses and bottles and window panes shatter with a piercing bang. The guests begin to yell in panic. Kant can´t be understood anymore, hardly am I able to hear my own screams.
The room whirls like a spinning top...
... and explodes with thunder and flashes just at the moment when my pleasure reaches its climax.
Then...
... there is heavenly silence.
A smell of spring is in the air.
Through an open window sound the tweets of a blackbird.
"English tea," Kant says, imbibing from an ornamented porcelain cup, "is a matchless balsam for body and soul."
Selena and I are sitting opposite him in comfortable armchairs. I blink amazedly. The demon wears the same sexy outfit as before our trip and I´m still dressed in the cotton garment.
"Sometimes he has such fits," Selena says turned to me, "which can´t be stopped. Though..."
She smirks.
"... we aren´t completey without blame in this. Your groans have stirred him to the depths of his soul."
"What are you talking of, dear friend?" the philosopher asks.
"It´s about your dark side, Immanuel, which is unconscious to you."
He shakes slowly his head, grabs a pen und a small book lying on the tea table, and scribbles some sentences.
"We are," Selena whispers, "in the realm of the dead. You see that they are quite alive and communicating to one another, though not always as sociable as at Immanuel´s. Perhaps they´ll reincarnate some day, maybe they remain in their world. Or they go to the nirvana."
"But..."
I resort to telepathy.
—But you haven´t a thing with him?—
—Our relation is quite platonic, of course.—
I feel something between the lines.
—And?—
—Well, I´ve asked a girlfriend of mine to look after him.—
—And?—
—No matter how she manages it, he always puts on that marionette-and-machine-act.—
—So send him Freud. He´s dead, too.—
—He isn´t. He´s reincarnated.—
—Serious? What´s he doing now?—
—Rock music. Three Golden discs.—

[New Secret]

All the dashes I assume are used in substitution of quotes. You want the text of the characters to flow with less distraction but unfortunately that leaves the reader to guess who is saying what and frankly, the majority of readers will skip over anything that requires critical thinking to understand what is going on. It might seem like a hassle or a visual nuisance to you if there was a "said Character." at the end of each line, but believe me, it takes the guesswork off the reader's shoulders.

Lines like "The flower ornaments on the wallpaper are softly undulating to the rhythm of my pleasure." is way out there and all I can do is laugh a little at that. I don't even know what that means but it sounds funny.

Thank you for sharing this.

[Tammuz]

All the dashes I assume are used in substitution of quotes.

Their purpose is to distinguish telepathic from oral communication.

Lines like "The flower ornaments on the wallpaper are softly undulating to the rhythm of my pleasure." is way out there and all I can do is laugh a little at that. I don't even know what that means but it sounds funny.

Sorry, I´m German and far from mastering the English language perfectly. What I mean is probably better articulated with "undulating with the rhythm"

[Tammuz]

Cancelled double post, see my reply above.