Cherry Blossom Girls Box Set

by Harmon Cooper

  My smartphone had been on this entire time, and it was once I brushed my teeth and got into bed with Grace that I realized my folly.

  I wanted to be able to talk to Luke – my god, did I need some advice – but I also wanted to limit the ability to track me.

  So, I did what they do in movies and television dramas: I removed the battery from my phone, walked out onto the balcony, and hurled it to the empty streets below.

  Grace laughed. She was, of course, reading my mind again and knew that I was simply replicating something I’d seen that I had no idea was viable or not. But who could blame me?

  I was a product of the twenty-first century. Everything was available at my fingertips and much of my ‘knowledge’ came from movies and long TV series.

  “Let’s hope that works,” she said.

  I grinned at her as I got into bed. “Tomorrow, we’ll get a prepaid smartphone at Okay Buy and a mini USB to mini USB. Hopefully, I can mod your abilities using my phone.”

  “Mod my abilities?”

  “I was able to with Veronique; I just don’t think I found the right subfolder in your files yet.”

  “Okay.” Grace went into the bathroom and returned a few moments later, wearing a robe that I hadn’t seen before.

  This got me thinking about another thing that was never resolved with Mystique. If she wore a robe and tore it off, what actually happened?

  Grace’s robe formed into a black, shiny spandex suit with a zipper on the front, similar to what she wore back in the BMW. It was open all the way to her belly button.

  “That’s an interesting thing to sleep in,” I gulped.

  Don’t fuck this up, I reminded myself.

  I’d watched plenty of anime before and I didn’t want to be the semi-loser MC who got all nervous around the girls. I’d read some of the harem gamelit stuff too. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a badass tiger-faced dude with stacked muscles and rock-hard abs, nor was I a loser that hadn’t been laid in a while who didn’t know how to handle the women around him.

  I was an anomaly.

  Scratch that – I actually was that last one, which made me a trope.

  You’re a goddamn trope! the voice in my head screamed.

  “Writer Gideon is thinking about sex,” Grace said in a coy voice as her clothing morphed.

  If you guessed she was back to her birthday suit, you guessed wrong (although that would have been nice).

  She wasn’t far off though: topless now, wearing a pair of boy shorts.

  Without a word, the shifter got into the bed, mumbled about it being cold, and pressed her feet into my body.

  If I were writing this book as a fiction, I’d have the bad guys burst in right now to foil the MC’s potential for scoring just to be an ass. Luke would have said something about action, and I would have gone for it. Readers would have felt the tension and my disappointment, and I would have propelled them along, no matter how harrowing my tale.

  But true life is stranger than fiction, especially when you associate yourself with psychic shifters.

  So, what happened next was a lot more innocent than I thought it was about to be.

  She fell asleep.

  Goddamn me to hell in a handbasket full of sticky cum socks.

  Never have blue balls struck a man so hard, but that’s what happened as I heard her start snoring softly, her feet still pressed into me.

  Focus on your writing, I thought, in an effort to cool down. You didn’t know her intentions anyway.

  Rather than go rub one out – I was trying to be above that animalistic instinct – I started plotting my creative nonfiction account of what had happened to me so far.

  When you can’t get laid, write! I reminded myself as I kicked the blanket off.

  Said every loser writer ever?

  Maybe.

  As if she were reading my mind, and there was a God who was gracious and good and wanted a writer trying to break bad like Yours Truly to get him some, Grace sat up like a damn vampire, her arms crossed over her chest.

  I nearly hopped out of bed when I saw her white eyes, but they softened, and seconds later, she was bringing me in for a kiss.

  And damn, it was a nice kiss too.

  “You were good today, Writer Gideon.”

  Shit, she could have told me I was a member of the Flat Earth Society and I would have agreed.

  Saying that I was putty in her hands was the understatement of the century.

  She could be anyone – and I’m not saying she could be anyone in terms of she could be any person, I’m saying that in terms of we could have sex and she could be any person while we have sex.

  Talk about the ultimate fantasy. I could have sex with Natalie Johansson, Oprah, the Queen of England …

  Okay, maybe not that last one, but that’s what was on my mind as she looked at me – and not those women in particular, just the fact that any fantasy I had was possible. Hell, fantasies I never knew I had were possible.

  And of course she understood this. She read my thoughts like they were a book with the font set for seniors.

  So, I tried a little experiment.

  Instead of asking her, I asked her through thought to her to show me her true form. Not the high elf with white blonde hair and straight up Aryan features; no, I wanted to see her real form, who she truly was under all the personas.

  I wanted to get down to basics, and tension between us was so high that I figured it was now or never.

  Are you sure?

  Do it, I thought back.

  Layers of skin began to peel back from Grace’s face, her hair morphing into various shades, her skin tightening and loosening, her eyes fluttering as they changed colors, her nose and chin elongating as she cycled through dozens of forms she’d taken.

  What was left was a thin, emaciated woman, not unlike Veronique in her snuff videos.

  Grace’s face was covered in zits and acne scars, her hair dark, her eyes black, her nose small, and her voluptuous features nonexistent.

  I gasped, and as I did, she immediately reverted to the form that I’d first met: Scandinavian, white blonde hair, blue eyes, and soft features.

  “I didn’t mean …” I cleared my throat. “I wasn’t offended. You can be that form with me.”

  Grace laughed softly. “It was a joke, Writer Gideon, I wanted to see how you would respond. This is my true form.” She yawned and lay back down. “You should go back to thinking about your writing while I sleep. Tomorrow, you should write all day. I think what you’re planning to do is a great idea, and I think there are more like us.”

  “More like you and me?”

  “No, not like me in particular, more like Veronique and me. Superpowereds. I’m sure there are more, but I’m not able to sense them right now. Maybe they’re dead. Maybe they’re too far away.”

  “Yeah, I’ll get to writing.” I swallowed awkwardly. “Um, it’s been nice getting to know you.”

  Yes, I should have kicked myself in the ass for that line, but I felt like an idiot for how I’d acted over the last few minutes, and I had to say something to save face.

  “If you want to do this now and get it out of the way, we can,” she said in the way that a doctor would relay a diagnosis.

  “Do what?”

  She raised an eyebrow at me. “Do you want to put your cock in me?”

  I gulped, my face turning red. “It’s never been presented to me in that way.”

  Where did she learn these terms? I wondered, still floored by what she’d said.

  In your thoughts. The videos you watched, she said inside my head.

  “Please don’t read my thoughts!” I smoothed my hand over my face. What twenty-five-year-old American male in 2030 hadn’t seen his fair share of fucked up porn? I mean, there may have been some Amish guys, or some Mormons out in Utah, but even those dudes had multiple wives and by my age, shit, they would have had multiple kids too.

  Grace shrugged. “Okay, then we will make it more romantic. Tomorrow
night. I will only read your thoughts if you ask me to.”

  “Promise?”

  “I can’t promise that,” she said with a soft laugh. “But I can try. You’ve seen a lot of videos of sex.”

  “Ahem, I’m aware.”

  “A lot. Must be thousands in your head. They are quite educational.”

  “And what about Veronique?” I asked, changing the subject.

  “She will be asleep until I tell her to wake up.” Grace turned away and pressed her ass into me. “Goodnight, Writer Gideon.”

  But both of us knew that it wasn’t going to end there, and that rather than wait till tomorrow night – especially considering who knew what could happen tomorrow – we both came to the silent decision that we’d better finish it now.

  So that’s what we did.

  It only took a second of her ass being pressed into me for our parts to connect. It was natural, there was nothing unnatural about it. I was in my boxers, she wasn’t in anything, and things just happened.

  She grabbed me by the waist and pushed my member closer to her and …

  The penis took on a mind of its own and searched for the warmest place it could find.

  My thoughts were immediately silenced.

  As soon as I was in, and she was gyrating her hips, my thoughts were but a battered wind chime beating in the distance. I took her from behind, and she stretched her neck back to kiss me.

  Sure, I should have been wearing a condom, but what was the worst that could happen? Superhero babies? Who wouldn’t want a superhero baby? And what if she had a disease? Well, I had already signed my death warrant by taking her in to begin with.

  So, I wasn’t worried about protection.

  In retrospect, there were a ton of things I would have liked to try, especially with a shifter, but that was not on my mind the first time we went at it.

  Don’t cum too soon, don’t cum too soon.

  That was more of my thought process, because Grace was by far the hottest woman I’d ever been with.

  Shit, I had to close my eyes so I wouldn’t see her because I knew if I could see her, if I could see the flesh of her breasts moving up and down as I pumped from behind, her neck turned to me and her eyes locked on my face, her throat as she breathed, her teeth as she bit her lip … if I saw those things, then that would be it for me.

  That would be all she wrote, and I’d make it just about one minute before blowing my load and calling it quits.

  So, my goal then became to make it for two minutes.

  Best night of my life? Well, take out the dead bodies, and the fact that we were almost killed in Wooster Square, and I’ll give you that one.

  It was a damn good end of a damn weird day.

  Chapter Twelve: Two Days to Write a Book (or Death)

  I woke up at the crack of dawn, ready and able to write my magnum opus. I kissed Grace on the cheek, hopped out of bed, secretly gave myself a pat on the back for being such a badass, grabbed my glasses and my laptop, and went down to the lobby so I could tap out some words.

  I wouldn’t do things that risky in the future, but I was still new at this whole running from the law and hanging out with badass superpowered women thing, so I still made rookie mistakes.

  At least I’d thrown my cell phone away.

  I made it to the lobby, grabbed some coffee, and sat down at a big wooden table, not at all focused on the breakfast buffet.

  I had the urge to talk to Luke, but I knew it was just as early in Canada and that I could tell him of my escapades later – I mean, the escapades of my MC.

  I pulled up my manuscript and checked the word count.

  Yep, it was still at three thousand words, which meant Charles Dickens’ ghost hadn’t logged into my computer last night and typed out a few thousand just to help a brother out.

  Damn you, Charles Dickens’ ghost!

  I needed to set a motto for the manuscript I was writing; something I could get behind, something that would inspire me forward.

  Kurt Vonnegut would do the trick, as he often did.

  I checked a file I kept on quotes I’d saved from books I had read and found a great quote from Cat’s Cradle: “Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either.”

  The goal was not to alienate readers. The goal was to expose this terrible government experiment that created women like subject V and subject G – although Grace was the name that I had given her and there was no telling what her actual name was.

  There was also no telling what she actually looked like. Or what she sounded like. Or what she really thought because she could just be mirroring your own thoughts.

  All this was beside the point – I needed a better quote. I found one from good ol’ Barbara Taylor Bradford that I’d read in a writers’ self-help book: “A novel is a monumental lie that has to have the absolute ring of truth if it’s going to succeed.”

  Fueled by coffee and the rage to succeed at something that I should not be trying to succeed at – I meant creative nonfiction here – my fingers were all action, little pistons pumping the keys as the words flowed freely.

  By God, I was a genius. I was a great writer – a much-praised literary enigma!

  I was writing a motivational self-help book alongside the founders of The Secret; I was in the Chicago meatpacking plants with Upton Sinclair; I was getting nitty gritty in Tokyo with William Gibson; I was inventing elaborate magic systems with Brandon Sanderson while chain-smoking cigarettes on a balcony overlooking a strip club with Charles Bukowski.

  I was James Patterson dictating his 853rd airport thriller to his co-writer; I was in France with Fitzgerald getting FUBAR and arguing with Zelda; I was snorting coke from Stephen King’s trash can; I was at the airport with J.K. Rowling, as she finally dreamed the Harry Potter series alive.

  Quiet, Writer Gideon.

  Even though Grace hadn’t said this, hadn’t thought-beamed this down to me from our top floor penthouse, it was much-needed.

  In actuality, I was sitting in a hotel alone, typing about my encounter with a psychic shifter while trying to cook up a self-published, creative nonfiction book that I hoped would be a bestseller.

  Delusional, right?

  I was also researching what would happen once they caught me; they’d bring either the cops or federal law enforcement officials and a list of how many federal crimes I had committed.

  Hell, I was even worried about not showing up for my shift at the Yale gift shop later that day.

  So, a lot was going on in my brain, some of those thoughts completely delusional, others borderline pathetic.

  But after the coffee settled, and after I told myself to chill the fuck out and stop being unrealistic, the words came rapid-fire. It took me about three hours, but I was up to eight thousand words by the time I decided to take my happy writer’s ass back up to the hotel room.

  My finished manuscript would be about fifty thousand words or so, and then I had to have it edited, but I had a quick editor fond of Adderall who could turn out a manuscript in forty-eight hours.

  I didn’t yet know how I would pay her without the payment being tracked, but I figured that was what PayPal was for. I also figured I could probably run money some way through some sub-company in Singapore, and then transfer it anonymously to her account.

  Or I could just have Grace hypnotize someone and tell them to transfer the money.

  Boom, that would work.

  “Lucy, I’m home,” I said as I opened the door. I found Grace sitting on the bed, the blanket up to her chest as she watched a morning talk show.

  “That’s not a bad start, Writer Gideon. Maybe you can write another five thousand words today, or more. If you can write more, maybe I can reward you.”

  I was living the writer’s dream – or nightmare, depending on who you asked.

  And to keep the narrative going, I needed to get to Okay Buy to pick up a few more weapons for my arsenal.

  I
never pictured myself as the type of guy who could afford a convertible BMW, let alone drive one.

  I must have looked like someone I would have been jealous of just a week ago – top down, beautiful woman in the front – as we zipped over to Okay Buy. I’m sure we turned at least a few heads.

  On the agenda: a mini USB to mini USB, and a prepaid smartphone. Grace had gone for her Asian disguise, and I was in my bearded Yale bulldog disguise. Low profile as ever.

  We found the cable and went to check out in the smartphone area. Grace worked her magic, and we left the store with both items. Fastest trip to Okay Buy I ever took.

  Of course, we triggered the security alarm at the front door, but we were simply waved through; another advantage of having a psychic with you.

  As we drove back to the hotel, we listened to some pop radio station Grace had chosen. It was bad music, manufactured to the point that it just seemed stale, but she seemed to enjoy it, so I didn’t start up a diatribe of how bad pop music had become in the 2020s.

  I couldn’t look over at her without thinking about what happened between us last night, so I kept my focus on the road, and the vehicles, both human-driven and AI driven, that pulled in front of me.

  Back to the concierge and Grace pulled her typical stunts. Then we told the front desk that we’d be staying an extra night, and to bill our company.

  I had come up with that one actually, “Bill our company.”

  It made things sound so official. I was the CEO, she was the CFO.

  Up to the top floor we went, and as soon as we keyed ourselves into our room, we checked on Veronique.

  She was gone.

  Panic exploded in my chest. I hadn’t even had a chance to set down the Okay Buy bag when a hanger came flying out of the closet.

  The metal wrapped around Grace’s legs, causing her to spill over just as another one flew out, this one tightening around her neck until her face started to turn blue.

  “Stop!” I shouted, so petrified I was unable to move.

  Grace cycled through forms as the life was choked out of her.

  As Grace gasped, Veronique stepped out from behind the bathroom door, quickly moving over to the shifter and crouching down to touch her.