Tri-ethereal Ch. 09

"Did you tell him why I wanted to talk to him?"

"Yes I did and John is anxious to talk to you too. Oh and Erin . . ."

"What?"

"John is very depressed that the Tarah Desert scrolls didn't reveal anything new. Go easy on him."

"You didn't have to tell her that," John said to me in my inner ear.

"I will," Erin answered me.

"OK Erin, I'm going to take my clothes off so that you can see how the sexes change. Is that alright with you?"

"Oh yes by all means, Johanna. I want to know everything there is to know about your union."

Then to my counterpart, "Are you ready John?"

"Yes I am Johanna," he said.

I removed all my clothes and lay down on Erin's sofa. I closed my eyes and pictured John's naked body in my mind's eye. Within seconds I could feel him entering me, penetrating me with his love.

As soon as our metamorphosis was finished I sat up; I didn't remain lying down to enjoy it like I have in the past. Johanna was in transition and I was in possession of our body. Erin was just staring at me, a look of complete fascination on her face.

"Oh John," Erin exclaimed. "Watching your body change sexes like that was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."

I took my clothes out of an overnight bag Johanna had brought with her and I put her clothes into it. Then I started to get dressed.

"Do you have clothes on when you're in transition?" Erin asked me.

"No," I answered her. When Johanna and I are in transition we are nude. It's a wonderful feeling, being nude while in transition. Even the limited feelings we have here in Corporeal. But the feelings we had when we were in Tri-ethereal was much better. Do you have some aspirin? I have a terrible headache."

"Sit there, I'll get some for you. Johanna had a headache after she went through union too. Why is that?"

"It's something that happens to us since we've been here in Corporeal. I would like three aspirins please."

After I finished putting on my clothes Erin gave me a big hug. Then, "I still love you John. I guess I always have."

She bowed her head and cast her eyes down. I knew what she was thinking. I was thinking the same thing. In twenty thousand years she is the only Corporealian that I have ever loved. She was the only Corporealian that I had allowed myself to fall in love with.

I'm sure the foot injury and the hospital had a lot to do with that. True too, she was beautiful back then. In fact, she still was. She hadn't gotten fat like many other Corporealians do once they reach forty. Johanna told me that she had taken care of her body, eating right, exercising and jogging regularly. She could easily pass for someone ten or fifteen years younger.

"Erin, I . . ."

"No John, don't say it."

"Please Erin, I have to tell you. The reason I left you years ago without saying good-bye was because I knew that if I came to you once more . . ."

I paused.

Then, "After that night we spent in bed together, I knew that I had to leave you. If I didn't, I would never have left you. You would have watched yourself grow old while I retained my youth."

She put her right first finger on my lips and smiled into my eyes. Her left hand was on my shoulder. My arms were around her waist. We kissed. It was a long, passionate kiss.

After we broke the kiss, "Erin, I have wanted to do that since I first saw you last week."

"Johanna, your counterpart, told me all about why you left me. Your secret is safe with me John. Besides whose going to believe an old lady who is still in love with a dashing young stud she met fifty years ago?"

She grabbed my hand and headed toward her bedroom door.

I pulled back. "Erin, I don't want to hurt you again."

"You won't hurt me John. Now there's no reason for you to leave. I know that you're a Trimorph and I know about your changing sexes."

The oldest Corporealian I have ever had sex with was a female in her mid forties and that was a couple of hundred years ago. She was a prostitute I met in a saloon. I was horny and Johanna was in deep transition. But that's another story. Erin wasn't a prostitute and I wasn't horny. But I was still in love with her.

"Will you do me the honor of making love to me without Johanna looking over your shoulder this time?"

After, we were lying in her bed together. We were both naked.

Erin lifted up the sheet and looked at me. "I was just checking to make sure you were still you."

I gave her a quizzical look.

"The Trimorph I went to bed with last month changed sexes right in the middle of it all. I started out having sex with a male and ended up having sex with a female." Then she smiled; her eyes sparkled.

I grabbed her around the waist. We wrestled. We kissed. I was alive again! I wasn't stuck in an alien world with no hope of getting back to my own world. We made love again.

Later we were sitting in her bed eating some leftover cold fried chicken and potato salad. We were both still naked.

"John, I know that you're very depressed over Johanna not finding any new information in the scrolls. But I want . . ."

"I'm not depressed. Not now anyway." I smiled at Erin.

"I'm glad that I could help you overcome your depression."

I continued, "Johanna told me that there were some lines that she couldn't decipher because they were too deteriorated. I want to look at them."

"They're in real bad shape, John. I don't believe you'll get anything from them."

"I'm a better translator of Japekian than Johanna. That's because she stayed in transition most of the time. It was easier for me to find work thousands of years ago. It was also safer. Single females were often kidnapped and raped or sold into sexual slavery."

I tell Erin that if I find out that the Tarah Desert scrolls contain information that helps me return to Tri-ethereal then I will have to go back. I tell her that it's not just my choice; Johanna also wants to return home. Erin understands; she wants me to go back.

She asks me to tell her again how Johanna and I were banished here in the first place. I tell her that I was tied to an altar in the shape of an X and the hemlock poison was forced down my throat. Johanna was in transition at the time. I fell into unconsciousness and woke up in a field of grass next to a road in ancient Japek.

Erin doesn't understand. She doesn't understand how it is possible to literally go from one world to another just by drinking something, even if it was a poison. She could understand it if I were brought here in some kind of space portal or something but not just by drinking something.

She tells me of a psychology class she once took. She tells me that our mind can play tricks on us. We can even convince ourselves that something happened to us that really didn't happen. Even dreams we have had, we can convince ourselves that those events really happened.

"Are you sure you weren't forced to drink some concoction and then have some kind of nightmare that you were in Tri-ethereal?"

"No Erin. I was in Tri-ethereal for over ten years with Johanna. I have been here in Corporeal with Johanna for twenty thousand years. I didn't dream any of that."

Her question angered me. But more than that, it depressed me again. I didn't want to hurt her so I left her apartment and returned to mine. Once there I did what I always do when I want to think, I put on the television. I watched it for a couple of minutes before muting it.

There was science fiction story on about a mad scientist who developed an apparatus that allowed him to enter the minds of other Corporealians while they are sleeping. He can put thoughts into their minds that make them do what he wants them to do. It's a stupid movie. I muted it so I could think.

I rehashed everything that happened to me and Johanna, from the moment she was abducted by Strydamu to my waking up in ancient Japek.

After about twenty or thirty minutes a scene in the movie catches my interest. I un-mute it and watch it for a few minutes. The mad scientist has put a suggestion into a female's mind that causes her to believe that she is living on a different planet where females are the sex slaves of males. She has become his naked sex slave and is living in a room of his house that he has converted into a sex slave's dungeon. He has her believing that there is no other world outside the dungeon.

The movie stimulates me to contemplate about what Erin said earlier, about me just dreaming that I was in Tri-ethereal after I drank the hemlock potion. I think about the thousands and thousands of Trimorph bodies just lying under the altar at Stonebridge . . . as if they are sleeping.

All of a sudden it dawns on me, like a revelation or a door suddenly opening.

I say to myself, "Unamorphs gave Trimorphs a suggestion that drinking the vinegar and crushed hemlock leaves would send them into unconsciousness and paralysis to Corporeal. But that's a myth. The only thing that can harm a Trimorph is to torch our body or to chop our head off. Our body will heal itself if given enough time."

I look again at the naked sex slave on the television. She is sleeping on a cot with a mattress stuffed with straw but no blanket, just like me and Johanna had in the Norlen prison. She has manacles on her ankles and wrists with another chain around her waist, again just like me and Johanna had in the prison.

I think again of the thousands of Trimorphs still under the altar.

"It wasn't a solstice or an equinox when I was forced to drink the hemlock. That too is a myth."

I look again at the television.

"I'm still in Tri-ethereal," I say to myself. "I've never left. The past twenty thousand years has been one long, terrible . . ."

I do not finish the sentence. I know that my and Johanna's experiences in Corporeal for the past twenty thousand years have not been a dream; they were real. Yet, Corporeal is only one type of reality.

I know what I must do!

I go into the bedroom of our apartment and lie down on the bed. I close my eyes. I picture Johanna's nude body in my mind's eye. I feel her begin to envelope me and wrap herself around me.

But there is something wrong. She is fighting me. She doesn't want to go through union. She complains that she has a headache and wants to go back to sleep.

I push her on and force her to go through union. She cries out in pain, the pain of someone being forced against her will . . . of someone being raped. But I do not stop. Deeper and deeper I enter into her. Farther and farther I push her on.

"No John please," she begs. "Let me go back to sleep. It hurts. I have a headache."

"I'm not going to stop now," I say to her. Envelope me; wrap yourself around me!" I command her.

I see her nude body. I smack her on her ass. She begs for mercy. I smack her again and again. She cries out.

I plunge deeper and deeper into her love. She begins to respond, enveloping herself around my length. I pinch her nipples and yank hard on them. I push her harder. She moans in delirium; she is a helpless ragdoll.

Deeper and longer, faster and harder I drive her farther. I am almost there. My climax is approaching.

Faster, deeper, I plunge on. Driving, thrusting, pumping I cannot stop.

Johanna is writhing, thrashing and squirming.

I am grunting and moaning; driving her on, pushing her farther, harder.

Suddenly Johanna screams out, "Oh Joooooohn. I'm comiiiiiing to you!"

One more thrust and I too explode in a cataclysmic eruption.

I then plunge into bliss; an ecstasy I have not felt in twenty thousand years.

John is in possession of their body and Johanna is in transition. John can feel that too; with a feeling that he has not had in twenty thousand years.

"But that shouldn't be," he says to himself. "I should be in transition and Johanna should be in possession of our body."

"What's wrong?" he asks himself.

He opens his eyes. He is not in his apartment! He is lying on his back inside a very small glass enclosure. There are flowers all around the enclosure. The glass enclosure is lying on a bier in a large candle lit room. It is night.

He touches his chest. He isn't wearing his blue jeans and T-shirt; he is wearing the clothes he wore when he was in Tri-ethereal. He looks around.

He begins to cry tears of joy as he realizes that he is back in St. Michael's Cathedral in Norlen. Lord Kennington is kneeling next to the glass encased bier with his head down and praying.

John taps on the glass and Lord Kennington looks up. He too begins to cry tears of joy. His long, lost son has returned from banishment.

Lord Kennington pushes up on the glass enclosure, opening it. He hugs John tightly.

"John . . . John you're back. Oh! Thank God you're back! The last seven days have been pure hell. I thought I lost you forever."

"It's good to be back home Lord Kennington." He pats his friend on the back.

"What about Johanna . . . is she alright?" Lord Kennington asks.

"I don't know . . . Johanna are you there?" John asks his counterpart.

"John what happened? Everything was dark, I couldn't see or hear or feel anything. John what happened? We went through union in Erin's apartment and I woke up here in our apartment. Didn't we just go through union in Erin's apartment?"

"Johanna, I can see you. Can you see me?"

"No John I can't. It's dark. How did I get out of deep transition? How did I get in our apartment?"

"Johanna, listen to me! Picture me in your minds eye. Look at me!" I command my counterpart.

"John, I'm wearing your clothes."

"Just picture me in your mind's eye. Do it now!"

I picture John's nude body in my mind's eye.

Suddenly, "John! Where are you?"

"Can you see me? Can you see who I'm with?"

"John!" Johanna screams again. "Are you where I think you are?"

"Yes my darling, I'm home with Lord Kennington."

"Oh! John how did you do it? How did you get back home?"

"I figured it out. We never left."

"What do you mean John? I don't understand."

"It's a long story that I can't explain now. I want to go through union again right now."

"John I . . ."

"Just picture my nude body in your mind's eye, Johanna. Do it now!"

I lay down on the bed and pictured John's nude body in my mind's eye.

I lay down in a pew and pictured Johanna's nude body in my mind's eye.

I felt John entering me, penetrating my depth.

I felt Johanna enveloping me enshrouding me with her love.

After several moments John is back in Corporeal in the bedroom of his apartment and Johanna is in St. Michael's Cathedral in Tri-ethereal. Lord Kennington is hugging his daughter tightly. She too has been released from imprisonment. They are both crying tears of joy.

"Johanna I can see that you're with Lord Kennington. Can you see me?"

Johanna looks up. "Yes John I can see you, I can feel you, I can even smell again. Oh John I'm home! We're home!"

She pauses. Then, "But how did you do it? I don't understand; what happened? Why are you in Corporeal?"

"It begins with faith. It has to do with philosophy and psychology, intrinsic and extrinsic reality. Something that you were never interested in. I'll explain it to you later. Right now I want to go back to Erin's and talk to her."

"OK John. I'll talk to you later. It's good to be home again."

Johanna looks at Lord Kennington and smiles. She hugs him again.

"Johanna, it's late but we must wake King Andrew and Queen Marina and tell them the good news. They will want to know that you have returned"

"What about Mr. Strydamu? He kidnapped me . . ."

"He's dead," Lord Kennington interrupts her. "When Sir Glauco tried to arrest him he pulled a knife. Sir Glauco took his head off with one blow from his sword."

As the two are leaving the church Johanna asks, "John, if you figured out how to get us back home, do you know how to get the others back?"

"Yes Johanna I do and we are going to start on that the first thing tomorrow morning."

They have only just begun