Cherry Blossom Girls Box Set

by Harmon Cooper

  Grace changed into the male newscaster from earlier, a crisp blue suit, pocket square, and tie clip forming as her shoulders lengthened and her chest pulled taut.

  “How about a female version of that?”

  Her body shrank as she turned into the geisha wearing the newscaster’s suit.

  “Happy?”

  “Better, but lose the geisha hair and ease up on the makeup. Remember, we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”

  Her hair relaxed, and the white makeup disappeared. Now she looked like an Asian woman in her significant other’s suit.

  “Cool,” I said as I pulled the beamer back onto the street.

  Damn, it feels good to be a gangster, I thought as I moved slowly around the square so Grace could see the cherry blossoms. I wasn’t quite a badass yet, Walter White’s son to Walter White proper, but I could at least say that I’d seen some shit.

  And no, I still wasn’t worthy of getting a tear tattoo on my face, but hell, it had only been a day and I had already handled dead bodies – something that would be hard to stomach if I actually sat around and thought about it.

  Still, not quite time for a tear tattoo.

  I saw the entrance to my basement apartment a couple blocks away and felt the urge to stop in and check the place.

  That, of course, would be the noobest of noob moves, so I just continued along.

  I circled the block twice, enough times to get a whiff of the cherry blossoms.

  Damn if they weren’t pretty, even at night.

  Like floating cotton balls on the surface of a dark body of water, the blossoms were as intriguing as they were fleeting, gone in a short amount of time only to reappear again.

  Passages like the last one were the reason I never attempted to write romance or literary fiction.

  Feeling the chill in the air, and worried that someone would see us, I pressed the button on the center console that brought the top back over our heads.

  Grace turned to me and I watched as her Asian features vanished. She was herself again, Lady of Lorien cosplayed by a buxom porn star.

  She locked eyes with me and her clothing started to morph. She was now in a tight red dress, something Jessica Rabbit would barely fit into.

  “Too skimpy for Stamford, Connecticut,” I told her with a laugh.

  She playfully snapped her fingers and she was in black latex, the zipper over her chest unzipped all the way to her belly button.

  It was then that I realized she was reading my mind, going through the images in my head …

  Her form changed again, and she wore a fishnet body stocking, latex boots, and cat ears.

  I gulped as I realized she’d found my personal spank bank.

  “Ha! Not that one, just, um, regular clothes while I’m driving,” I said, distracted as hell. Luckily, Highway 95 wasn’t too crazy. There were a few eighteen-wheelers, and the occasional granny driver, but traffic was moving along at a good clip.

  “You sure?” she asked, still in the fishnet getup and cat ears.

  “Yes, and please, don’t read my mind, especially not there.”

  “Don’t turn into your mom and don’t read your mind,” she said. Her clothing faded into the clothing I’d given her back at my apartment. “Better?”

  I nodded as a car with bright lights pulled behind me.

  The car eventually swerved around, and I had the notion to tell Grace to zap the driver with some bad nightmare juju, but I behaved myself, remembering that I was now a fugitive and had committed some type of felony by moving the bodies.

  Better to keep a low profile and not cause a highway accident to appease my road rage.

  An idea came to me as the BMW purred along the highway. I connected my phone’s Bluetooth to the radio, scrolled to my podcast app, and played the first one my finger landed on.

  “Can you make your voice sound like his?” I asked, as Ira Glass gave his This American Life intro.

  Grace cocked her head to the right as she listened to the voice. Finally, she nodded, and as I turned the radio down, she began speaking in his famous voice.

  “Hi, Writer Gideon, I am talking to you as the man on the radio. Each week I talk to you as the man on the radio. What else do you want me to say?”

  I snickered. “Say anything.”

  “Anything.”

  “You know what I mean. Okay, fine, let me ask you some questions. Who is the woman in the back seat?”

  “That’s Veronique,” she said in Ira Glass’s distinct voice. “She’s like me, but different.”

  “I remember you telling me something like that. And what are her powers?” I slowed my speed to get behind a white SUV. I should have put the vehicle on auto drive, but I felt like being in control at the moment.

  “Like I told you, she can do things with metal, and she’s like a vampire.”

  “And she has the plug on her neck too? I was meaning to check but … well, the last hour has been pretty crazy.”

  “She has the same port,” Grace said in Ira Glass’s voice.

  “Good. We can look around once we get to our hotel. Let’s stay at a nice place tonight – high up, expensive, exclusive. What do you think?”

  I glanced at her. The lights of the highway lamps cast diagonal arcs across her face.

  “Sounds good to me,” she said in her own voice.

  Chapter Ten: Snuff Videos

  Stamford had a pretty sick downtown for a less-than-large city. There were skyscrapers and a ton of expensive condos, mostly owned by people who took the train into Manhattan. WWE had their headquarters there, and as we took the exit to the city center, I saw their flag flying on the right side of the highway.

  I wondered if Vince McMahon was there now, plotting his next attempt to make the XFL viable.

  Once we arrived in the city, I located the Marriott downtown. We were going to stay in style this time.

  “Same plan as before,” I told Grace. “Except this time, we need to bring a body in with us.”

  “Veronique.”

  “Yep.” I nodded my head over my shoulder. “I need you to make sure everyone we see just thinks she’s sleeping and that I’m carrying her. No – better, she’s drunk. Make anyone that looks at us think she’s drunk.”

  “Drunk?” she tilted her head slightly.

  “It’s what happens when you drink too much alcohol.”

  “I see.”

  I thought about Veronique’s current getup. She wore a tight black mil-spec suit with molded armor on almost every part of the suit. It was the closest to an actual supervillain outfit I’d seen.

  “What are you getting yourself into?” I whispered as the concierge approached my car. I handed him the keys as we got out of the vehicle.

  “She’s drunk,” I lifted Veronique into my arms. “Who knew the, um, wells were so strong here in Stamford?”

  The concierge, a young, Indian guy, glanced from Grace, who also wore a tight black outfit, back to Veronique. He nodded at me as he put two and two together and got threesome.

  “It’s not what it looks like,” I said. “Grace, wipe his mind after this.”

  He started to say something but suddenly, his face went blank.

  I turned to Grace and caught her eyes going from white to blue. Without asking, she got my duffle bag out of the trunk and we entered the lobby.

  The place was posh; the ceilings were high, the seating ample, and to the left, a fifteen-foot-long glass panel had been erected before a flickering fire. The hotel clerk greeted us, and after a few formalities, she said our executive suite on the top floor was ready.

  She handed us our room keycard, smiled thinly, and told us to enjoy our stay.

  “How did you know I wanted the penthouse?” I asked Grace as we approached the elevator.

  Mind reader, I reminded myself.

  You are right, she said in my head.

  “You know what? Fine, you can read my mind sometimes, but no talking in my head.”

  “Too
many voices there already?”

  “Exactly.”

  The elevator took us to the top floor and after a quick trip down a long hallway, we entered our room.

  Of course I gasped.

  About the best hotel I’d stayed at up to this point was a Holiday Inn. This was something else entirely.

  The executive suite had two rooms, a kitchen, a balcony with a view of the city, and enough glitz and glam to give Gatsby a hard-on. There were paintings on the wall, slick wood accents, an abundance of space, a seventy-inch wall-mounted television, and cashmere throws on the two sofa chairs.

  “Holy shit,” I mumbled as I took in the room, nearly dropping Veronique. “Where should I set her?”

  “In the second room. The big bed is for us.”

  Don’t have to ask me twice, I thought as I moved her to the second room. Running lights on the floor lit up as I entered. This room was decorated in a similar way to the first, with a small table in the corner.

  I placed Veronique on the bed, black combat boots and all, and asked if there was anything else I should do for her.

  Grace shrugged. She stood in the doorway watching, an indecipherable look on her face.

  “How much longer until she wakes up?” I asked. “And do you think I can plug in while she’s asleep?”

  “Sure. If she wakes up while you’re checking her, I’ll shut her down.”

  A cold chill moved through me as I considered the way she’d said this.

  Shut her down?

  “You two aren’t androids, are you?” I asked, still not convinced that they were entirely human.

  She smirked. “You already asked me that, and no.”

  “If she wakes up, will she try to kill us?”

  Grace considered this for a moment as I set my laptop up on Veronique’s bed. “Maybe,” she finally said.

  After the long day I’d had, I was definitely interested in crawling up into that king-sized bed next to Grace. I tried not to think this, though, all too aware that she’d know any thoughts I had.

  I booted up my laptop, found the port on Veronique’s neck, removed the fleshy covering and plugged in.

  In the process, I finally got a chance to get a better look at Veronique.

  Her hair was much shorter than Grace’s, cut in a bob, and her features more pronounced, sharper and harder around the edges. She was lean and muscular, her torso long, and even though she was lying down, she still seemed poised to strike. Seriously, whatever mad scientist designed these two gene-therapy wonder women was one horny bastard.

  I plugged in and the login screen popped up.

  “Password?”

  “Same as mine,” Grace said. “Username: 1351885. Password: 1QAZ2WSX3EFV4321QWEASD.”

  “Please write that down for me.”

  She returned a moment later with the information written on the hotel pad. I keyed in the username and password and a new shadow box appeared, similar to Grace’s, with a series of dropdown folders.

  Veronique’s drive was much easier to navigate. I checked her deets and quickly moved on.

  Veronique, Subject V.

  Build: 2.7341

  Base height: 171 Centimeters

  Base weight: 50 kilos

  “Hello, nurse,” I said as I discovered that she had actual stats.

  The gamer fiction writer in me rejoiced.

  The six base stats had an adjustable dial next to them. Clicking and turning it to the right caused the other dials to adjust accordingly.

  A digital number over each base stat made it easy to adjust. Again, if I adjusted one, it adjusted them all, and they could only be adjusted up to the number ten, making min-maxing easy as hell to do.

  I settled on some numbers I was comfortable with:

  Strength: 4

  Intelligence: 6

  Constitution: 7

  Wisdom: 5

  Dexterity: 6

  Charisma: 2

  She wasn’t very strong, and she had the charisma of a pet rock, but she would be smart. And besides, most of her abilities lied about her superpowers.

  Or magic. I still wasn’t sure what I should call this shit.

  “Superpowers sounds cooler,” Grace said, her eyes slightly white, her pupils little black dots.

  “Works for me.”

  I drilled down further in the abilities menu to figure out exactly what Veronique could do. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything I could modify in here, at least not yet.

  Aside from base information, everything else was grayed out. Still, there was enough for me to get a handle on her powers and what she was capable of.

  Frightening stuff, too – especially her ‘vampire-like’ ability to drain a person’s life. I recalled the shriveled security goon back at the hotel and the fact that she’d started to do the same to me until Grace knocked her out.

  I gasped as I saw a series of test videos.

  “Do I really want to click this?” I asked aloud.

  Grace nodded, and I figured it couldn’t hurt.

  If we were going for the Pandora’s Box analogy, I would have already ripped the lid off, thrown it across the room, and pissed in the box.

  In the last twenty-four hours I’d seen dead bodies, had my mind read by a shifter, stolen two vehicles, become a fugitive, and watched another superpowered woman blow the handle off a door (still hadn’t explored that power yet).

  So if it was a snuff video, I was ready.

  “Fuck yes, I want to see this.” I clicked on the first video.

  Sure enough, it was a snuff video.

  In the clip, a blindfolded inmate handcuffed to a handicap chair was rolled into a room. His shirt was removed, and the only reason I assumed he was an inmate was his jumpsuit and the number written across his chest in permanent marker.

  A younger Veronique wearing a blue hospital gown approached him with her hand raised.

  With an indecipherable look on her face, she touched his arm and it began to shrivel.

  As it did, her own skin tone and luster started to change. I stopped the video there and started it again from the beginning, realizing this time that she looked slightly emaciated at the start. Toward the end, she looked absolutely vibrant.

  She feeds off people’s energy?

  I played the clip back.

  As she pressed her hand into his arm, his skin turned the color of beef jerky. A red aura appeared above her tiny fingers as the plague quickly covered his entire body. He died, his face purple, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, his muscles mangled.

  Veronique turned to the camera and smiled faintly.

  “Well, that was fucked up.” Naturally, I clicked another video. I mean, who wouldn’t by that point?

  The next video was of her doing the same thing to an animal. They had a lamb chained up in a room – how sacrificial! – and as soon as she touched it, someone’s future dinner and/or wool coat shriveled up and fell to the side.

  She started crying after killing this one.

  “So, she can suck the life force out of an animal …”

  Grace nodded, her eyes still white. This was the longest I’d seen them remain this color.

  “Well, at least she likes animals.”

  Nope, not even that fact made what she was doing okay. I also found it odd that she’d cry after the animal and not the human.

  But she isn’t the one doing this stuff, I reminded myself. I mean, she is, but she’s being told to do it. They are telling her to do it.

  Cue the Stranger Things theme.

  I clicked another video. She was older in this one, her curves starting to take shape beneath her hospital gown. There were two inmates chained to chairs, back to back, with their shirts off.

  Numbers were written on their chests, and one was clearly a skinhead with his swastika, Pepe the Frog, iron cross, and straight up Hitler tattoo.

  As if she knew who the former German dictator was – which she very well could have – Veronique lightly drummed her fingers aga
inst the inmate’s shoulder Hitler tattoo. He cried out, and the man tied behind him soon suffered the same fate. The skinhead died first, the other guy not long after.

  Tendrils of red energy left Veronique’s hand as she pulled it away from the inmate’s shoulder.

  “What about her other abilities?” I mumbled after watching yet another snuff video.

  This one had featured two men in suits next to her, their faces covered by surgical masks. When I observed the two secret agent men nonchalantly watching someone die, I was reminded of a quote from Confederacy of Dunces: “You can always tell employees of the government by the total vacancy which occupies the space where most other people have faces.”

  Ha!

  I clicked back and arrived at another folder. The second option was labeled with the word ‘METAL.’

  “So, she’s not like Magneto,” I whispered as I read through a brief description of her powers. “Or, not entirely like him.”

  Enhanced control over metal: Subject V has the ability to manipulate the property of any metal she can see or sense. At her current level, there are size limitations as to what she can manipulate, ranging from up to fifteen times her body weight. For items larger than her and out of the range of her abilities, she can focus on smaller portions of the object.

  “Subject V, huh?” I asked.

  Grace nodded as I moved to video evidence.

  This stuff was badass.

  Veronique could basically rearrange, move, and mold the metal in almost any object.

  I watched as she waved her hands in the air and created a metallic statue of pots and pans. In one video, she pulled the radiator off the wall and turned it into a spiny snake. In another, she stopped a bullet, and in yet another, she used her ability to levitate a metal table.

  Of course, there was another snuff video too.

  These fuckers sure liked their snuff videos, and in this one, she stripped the nails from the wall and killed an inmate chained to a chair.

  “So, she’s like Magneto,” I said.

  “Sure,” said Grace, her eyes still beaming white. “I’m tired now. Shall we rest?”

  Chapter Eleven: Hooking up in Stamford

  I’m an idiot, but you already knew that.