The Unexpected Journey of Kim Kardashian
Kim Kardashian woke before dawn with a feeling she did not recognize. Not dread, not excitement. Something quieter, heavier, like the moment you realize your reflection has been lying to you. Her minimalist mansion was still. The gated community outside hummed its usual peaceful and quiet lullaby, but inside her chest a question had woken up. A small, stubborn question: Is this really all I am?
It was not a crisis. She had survived too many for that. It was more like standing in a room you have lived in for years and suddenly noticing the walls have been repainted without you remembering when. She felt bored with her persona, the one she had built layer by layer, the legend of Kim Kardashian as some would say. Bored with the camera-ready version of herself. Bored with being flattened into a symbol by strangers who did not know her real voice, her real fears, her real mind. And then she remembered something she had avoided for years. She did not know anymore who she really was either.
She sat up, pressed her palms to her eyes, and whispered the kind of sentence no publicist wants to hear:
The words felt strange in her mouth, but right.
That night, she walked to a spot overlooking the city she had conquered and said it again. This time upward, outward.
"If there is something higher out there, something real, show me something true."
The gods, who rarely respond to Instagram posts but always perk up at sincerity, heard her. And because the gods are old and mischievous and love a good story, they gave her an answer the way they always give answers, by taking everything literally.
They told her: we see exactly what your problem is and we have a solution for you. You will go to the underworld and you can select a dead philosopher to be your guide up here. We give you two choices. Only two. Choose wisely.
Then the lights of her mansion dimmed all at once.
The gated community dissolved.
And Kim Kardashian fell, slowly and dreamlike, through layers of darkness until her heels touched cool stone.
Hades, the underworld.
Or at least its quiet reception lobby, decorated like an old municipal office that nobody had bothered to update since the Bronze Age.
A shade glanced up, unimpressed, and pointed. "Philosophical consultations. Down the hall."
She followed torches that burned without heat, each flame bending toward her like it recognized her face from somewhere. At the end of the corridor stood two doorways.
From the left room came a faint glow, the color of moral righteousness polished to a shine.
From the right came a different light altogether, dimmer but stubborn, like a lantern carried through a storm.
She stepped into the left room first. It looked very poor, not just minimalistic.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau sat at a simple wooden table, folded hands resting on a manuscript he rewrote for eternity. His posture was immaculate. His expression a blend of pity and principle. He looked at her as if she were a lost soul wandering into his private seminar.
"You are a child of society," he said. "Fashioned by artificial needs. If you suffer, it is because civilization has trapped you in illusions. Virtue is your way back."
Kim opened her mouth to respond, but he continued, warm and paternal.
"You must shed the make up. Embrace your natural goodness. The world deceived you, but you can be reborn."
It was soothing in the way self-help books can be soothing, written by people who think childhood purity can be retrieved like an old password.
Then she heard a dry cough from the other doorway.
Arthur Schopenhauer leaned against his desk in the next chamber, one hand buried in the fur of a small pudel who adored him. The pudel looked up at her with dark, curious eyes, tail twitching just enough to signal that she was interesting. Schopenhauer himself looked pale, drawn, with eyes sharpened by a lifetime of observing humanity too closely and finding it wanting.
"Oh please," he said. "She does not need another sermon from you, Hans-Jakob. Bring her here."
Kim Kardashian stepped into Schopenhauer's office.
"Sit," he said, pointing at a chair as if ordering her to face an unpleasant but necessary truth. "You do not suffer because society corrupted you. You suffer because existence itself is a workshop powered by endless desire. You chase an image of yourself because the Will drives you blindly toward it, the way a moth dives into a flame."
She frowned. "So what do I do with that?"
"You see the machinery," he said. "You stop pretending everything is fine. You stop painting over your torment with optimism and filters."
Rousseau appeared in the doorway, scandalized.
"She is not torment. She is misled."
"She is a woman," Schopenhauer replied. "Which is quite enough torment."
The pudel barked once, as if agreeing with both of them at the same time.
Kim stood between them. Rousseau glowed with earnest hope. Schopenhauer radiated cold clarity. Both brilliant. Both intolerable.
And then it hit her.
Neither one saw her.
Not Kim.
Not the person who had woken up wanting to understand herself.
Rousseau saw innocence stained by society.
Schopenhauer saw an organism trapped in cosmic machinery.
Only the pudel saw her as a real person.
She crouched down and held out her hand. The pudel sniffed it, then licked her fingers. She smiled in a way she had not smiled in a long time.
"You are so cute," she whispered.
Schopenhauer raised an eyebrow, as if embarrassed on behalf of the dog.
The pudel, however, leaned against her leg with the uncomplicated loyalty only animals can give.
Kim stood up again.
"What I want," she said slowly, "is not purity or pessimism. Not illusions or ice. I want someone who can walk with me. Someone who sees reality but does not use it as a weapon. Someone who tells the truth without pretending their truth is the only cure."
The halls went quiet.
She looked at Rousseau.
He cared for humanity so much he needed it to fit his idea of goodness. She could never breathe next to that.
She looked at Schopenhauer.
He saw everything a bit too cynical, but he did not fantasize.
And next to him stood a pudel who had already chosen her.
She knelt one last time, scratched the pudel behind the ears, and whispered:
"You are the only one in this theatre who is not performing."
Schopenhauer watched her with surprise. Not admiration, not judgment. Just a brief recognition that she meant it.
She stood, met his eyes, and said:
"Arthur, come with me."
He stiffened. No one had chosen him for companionship in centuries. But the pudel wagged its tail and nudged his leg, reminding him that sometimes the Will offers small mercies.
Rousseau bowed his head, stung but dignified.
Kim touched his arm gently.
"I hope your world exists somewhere," she said. "But it is just not the one I live in."
A staircase unfurled from the stone floor.
Light seeped in like dawn breaking underwater.
Kim ascended first.
Schopenhauer followed, carrying nothing but the gravity of his teutonic mind.
The pudel trotted between them, tail high, the only creature who understood that all philosophies depend on companionship.
When they reached the surface, Los Angeles glowed below like a circuit board humming with insatiable desire.
Schopenhauer squinted at it, unimpressed.
"I knew it," he muttered. "The Will has been upgraded."
Kim laughed for the first time that day. This guy was a real pessimist.
"Arthur, you just returned to earth and you are already thinking about making your testament?"
And that was the start of their strange partnership.