Cherry Blossom Girls Box Set

by Harmon Cooper

  I recalled the book and one of its protagonists, a vampire named Joshua York, the Pale King, the bloodmaster.

  “This isn’t a book, and we should probably go.”

  “Right,” I said as we exited the room.

  We stopped in front of the elevator, the woman still flung over my shoulder and Grace next to me, now holding my duffle bag.

  It was when we got to the lobby that I realized how fucked we truly were.

  The receptionist had been impaled by a lamp, still in her chair. To my left, one of the paramilitary soldiers – still had no idea what to call them at that point – was in a fetal position, completely shriveled up and as red as a strawberry. The other was in two pieces, his body demarcated by a steel slab that had been ripped from the wall.

  This was the one that caused me to vomit. To my credit, I vomited while still holding the woman over my shoulder, which must count for something. But vomit I did, my throat stinging of acid and oily pizza.

  “Sorry,” I gasped as I took in the scene for a second time. I had the notion of leaving the vampiric Magneto woman behind, but something told me she’d be worth more with us rather than against us.

  Of course, Grace sensed this. “She’s a bit more trouble than me.”

  “I didn’t think that was possible,” I said, staggering a bit.

  A dozen thoughts hit me at once, all centering around what to do with the bodies.

  “We can’t just leave them here,” I said as I set the woman down on a sofa. Later, of course, I would have just left them. But at the time I still thought cleaning up the bodies would be the right thing to do.

  “They’re not our bodies,” Grace said coldly.

  “Yeah, I can see that, Grace, but if we leave them here and more people see this, we’re doubly screwed, because local law enforcement will get involved.”

  “So, what should we do with them?” she asked, placing her hands on her hips. She looked cute in the moment – a thought that made me feel guilty, especially with the carnage all around.

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this …” I shook my head and just let it out. “We need to go to that couple’s room, get the keys to their SUV, load the bodies in the back, and figure out how to get rid of them. We need to do it quickly, as quickly as humanly possible.”

  Grace shrugged. “Okay.”

  “Seriously? That’s your reply to what I just said?”

  She nodded. “They’re in room 106. Should we go now?”

  “Yeah, will she be okay?” I tilted my head toward the other superpowered woman.

  “She’s going to be like that a while.”

  I swear Chinua Achebe whispered in my ear at that exact moment. “If we put ourselves between God and his victim, we may receive blows intended for the offender,” he wrote in Things Fall Apart.

  If ever there was a book title that described where my life had come …

  I sighed. “Let’s get the bodies.”

  Chapter Nine: Getting Rid of Dead Bodies Ain’t Easy

  It was relatively easy to get the keys to the SUV.

  Basically, Grace just knocked on the door and asked for it. Of course, she’d morphed into their daughter or something to make it more convincing, not that she needed to do that because of her psychic abilities.

  The doting father came running back with the keys, and we had transportation.

  Had I been given the chance to do it again, I would have instructed Grace to tell the couple to load the bodies for us. But these kinds of ideas would come later, after I’d grown used to being with a psychic.

  We needed to hurry.

  It wouldn’t be long before someone came and called the police. To run interference just in case, Grace stayed in the lobby while I went outside, got the SUV, and drove it up to the check-in lane.

  I popped open the back of the SUV and ran back inside.

  It’s hard to believe I’m telling someone this, but the first thing I did was take the bottom half of the severed body. It was surprisingly heavy, and as I carried it, I started to dry heave.

  I was able to keep it down this time and steeled myself as I went back to get the rest of the body. His torso was much heavier, and I was glad he wore a black helmet with green lights on it that prevented me from seeing his face. His entrails though … there are some memories I’d like to forget, and that is definitely one of them.

  I made a bloody mess of getting him to the vehicle, which I realized only made this crime scene more damning. Too late to do anything now, and I wasn’t about to leave any bodies behind. At least the fact that there were no bodies along with the bloodstains and signs of violence threw a loop in whatever police procedure would follow.

  I would have hated to be the detective tasked with figuring out what went on here. Which reminded me. Before I got the second body, I went into the office and saw a small box with cables feeding into it. The box was hooked to a television that showed four video images from the front desk area and the check-in lane.

  I unplugged everything.

  Realizing that wouldn’t do shit, I opened the box and pulled out the hard drive. I dropped the hard drive on the ground and stomped it.

  What are you doing? I thought as I picked up the now-dented hard drive and held onto it. I’d seen enough TV to know the cops could CSI the shit out of even a broken one.

  Panic had taken over by this point. I quickly ran back out to the SUV, threw the drive inside – I could deal with it later – then returned to the lobby.

  I dragged the second body to the vehicle. This one was a little lighter due to the fact that the guy’s skin had shriveled up. I didn’t know what vampiric Magneto did to him, but it was absolutely terrifying, and I hoped I would never be on the receiving end of her special abilities.

  Finally, I took the receptionist, who I placed on top of the others. This one was the hardest – I had actually interacted with her and she didn’t deserve to die – and just seeing her hair spill over when I set her on top made me hate myself.

  “You are an accomplice to murder,” I whispered as I went back inside to grab Grace and the other superpowered woman.

  By this point, my back was screaming at me, and my calves hurt. I wasn’t used to carrying anything, let alone actual people. So, I was glad to finally place the other woman in the back and cover the bodies with a tarp. I set my duffle bag on top of them and got in the SUV. Grace climbed in on the other side.

  Even though it was chilly out, I’d worked up a sweat. I knew I was an idiot for leaving blood stains in the lobby, but I didn’t have time to mop. This gave me an idea, a fucking brilliant idea.

  “Follow me,” I told Grace.

  We got out of the SUV and returned to the receptionist area. Sure enough, there was number on the phone for the maid staff; they apparently had a room in some other part of the complex. We called them, and an older white lady appeared a few excruciatingly long minutes later.

  She immediately went into a trance when she locked eyes with Grace.

  “Sure, I’ll clean all this up,” she said, “and I won’t remember any of it.”

  “Easy enough,” I said as we returned to the SUV. Grace got in the front beside me, and I started the vehicle up.

  I held my breath for a moment, afraid I’d smell the bodies. Once I couldn’t hold it any longer, I inhaled deeply through my nose and realized I couldn’t smell anything. At all. Damn sinuses.

  After navigating the neighborhood for a moment, we did the loop around and I pulled into the parking lot of a Home Depot. I got my phone out as Grace read my thoughts and relaxed.

  “Just texting a friend,” I told her. “And please, make sure the other one doesn’t wake up. Does she have a name, by the way?”

  “Yes. It’s Veronique.”

  I looked at her curiously for a moment. “So you know her name, but you don’t know your own?”

  She turned and looked out the window at a man rolling some wooden slabs to his truck.

  “Okay, we’ll deal
with that later.”

  I pulled up GoogleFace messenger and click on Luke’s icon.

  Me: Hey, got a minute?

  Luke: What’s up?

  Me: So, I’ve run into a little issue in my story and I wanted to pick your brain.

  Luke: Lay it on me.

  Me: My main character and the shifter were at a hotel, when this other superpowered woman kicks the door down.

  Luke: Did you just introduce a harem?

  Me: I hadn’t even thought of that, but let’s work through my issue first: there are three dead bodies in the hotel, and my MC wants to get rid of them.

  Luke: Why does he want to get rid of them? I mean, why does he care if they are there or not?

  Me: Well, he already knows the government is probably after him, but he doesn’t want to get local law enforcement involved. Because then it would create like a lot of things he doesn’t want to have to deal with, and that I don’t want to have to deal with as a writer, you know, police procedural things, etc. He’d rather skip all that and get back to the story.

  Luke: Aah, I see. That stuff is tedious, and if you get it wrong, someone will inevitably leave a review about it. Okay, so he has three bodies.

  Me: One of the bodies is cut in half, but yeah, he has three. And he has an SUV that he stole, or that the psychic shifter stole from a couple in the hotel. Right now, I have him with the three bodies in the back of the SUV and he’s parked in front of a home improvement store.

  Luke: I see. Okay, how about this: he takes them to the nearest dumpster and drops them in.

  Me: That could work.

  Luke: Wait, what happened to the other woman, the one who kicked down the door? She has superpowers, right?

  Me: She’s in the SUV too, passed out in the back seat. She has vampiric Magneto abilities. The psychic woman, who I’m calling Grace, put her ass to sleep.

  Luke: Okay, I really like where this is going. So you have …

  Me: I don’t have, my main character has.

  Luke: Lol. Okay, your MC has an SUV full of dead bodies, and you need to get rid of said bodies.

  Me: Yep.

  Luke: And where is the setting for the story, are you like in a big city, or you near the ocean?

  Me: The story is set near the ocean, or at least a big body of water, and I’m talking really big here, like the Great Lakes.

  Luke: Is there any cement around?

  I glanced up at the Home Depot. The last letter on their bright orange sign flickered. Above and to the left of the building, a half moon hung in the sky, its bottom portion covered by a single black cloud.

  Me: There could be some cement around. Like I said, they are in the parking lot of a home improvement store.

  Luke: You could cement their feet and toss them in the ocean.

  Me: The only problem with that is that he doesn’t have a lot of time. And he also doesn’t want to be traveling around with the bodies in the car.

  Luke: That’s understandable, it’d be a pain in the ass to deal with some dead bodies in the car; I hope you didn’t write yourself into a box.

  Me: A box? No. There must be some way.

  Luke: I got an idea! You said you could get another car, right? I mean you can have the psychic do just about anything, so you should be able to get another car. Just get another car and leave the bodies in the SUV. Let law enforcement sort it out off scene.

  Me: Yeah, I didn’t think of that, maybe I could leave the SUV and trade it out for another car.

  Luke: That could definitely work, especially if you leave the SUV somewhere where the cops won’t find it for a bit. Maybe have the MC drive it to a secluded location. At least long enough for your readers to forget about that and move on to the next bit of action. Remember: action, action, action.

  Me: You’ve saved my life yet again, buddy – thanks.

  Luke: No problem, let me know if you run into any other plot holes. This is a pretty crazy story you got going here.

  Me: It is definitely shaping up to be something unique.

  I turned to Grace and smiled. “Ready to steal another car?”

  It was cold out, a frigid wind whipping against our faces. A few seagulls had taken refuge in the parking lot, gathering under a lamppost.

  “Hello,” Grace told the couple with the convertible BMW with halogen lights. They had just pulled into the Home Depot parking lot and were in the process of getting out of their vehicle when we approached.

  She had taken on the appearance of a Hispanic woman, her hair long, dark, and flowing, her skin caramel, and her clothing tight.

  She’d borrowed the body from a woman who sold fiber tablets and other weight loss products. I’d seen the actress on a dozen infomercials, that smile of hers utterly contagious.

  “Can we help you?” the owner of the BMW asked.

  He was a fifty-something-year-old white man with a splattering of gray hair, a soul patch, and a light green sweater vest. His wife was similarly dressed.

  I stood next to her, my hat low so the brim partially concealed my face. “Remember what I told you,” I said to Grace under my breath.

  Her eyes flashed white. “We need your car.”

  “My car?”

  I glanced between the two, tension rising in my chest.

  “Sure, sounds like a good idea to me. We’ll give you the car.” The man reached into his pocket for his keys. He looked at his wife and she nodded, a blank look on her face.

  “You will take this SUV to …” Grace hesitated.

  “California,” I said.

  “You will take this SUV to California. Once you’re in California, you will leave the SUV at a …”

  “WalMacy’s.”

  “You will leave the SUV at a WalMacy’s in California,” she said softly. “Then, you will come back to Connecticut, where you will forget about all of this.”

  I cleared my throat. “The bodies in the back …”

  “Yes,” she said as she focused on the couple. “You will not look at the bodies in the back of the vehicle. You won’t even think about the bodies or anything else in the back.”

  “Not a problem. We’ll just hurry and drive to California.” The guy told his wife as he handed Grace the keys.

  “The hard drive …” I whispered to her.

  “And there is a hard drive in the SUV. Please get rid of this on your way.” She looked at me. “How should they get rid of it?”

  “Throw it off a mountain, drown it, smash it to pieces, doesn’t matter.”

  “Sure, you got it, doesn’t matter. We’ll handle it,” the man said.

  And with that, we had a new ride.

  I kept waiting for her abilities to falter, to not take effect. This only made me think of what we could possibly do once we figured out what was going on, and once I got better at working with her to manipulate people.

  The sky was the limit at that point.

  I checked over my shoulder to make sure there were no other cars in the parking lot, and once I saw that the coast was clear, I walked to the SUV and lifted Veronique out of the back.

  She was still out cold, and as I set her into the back seat of the convertible BMW, I made sure to buckle her up. Safety first! I waved to the couple as they got in the SUV and the man in the sweater vest waved back.

  “Where are we going now?” Grace asked as she got into the BMW beside me. Her face melted away and she was back to blonde hair and Norwegian features.

  “We need to get out of New Haven, so …” I thought for a moment. “Let’s go to Stamford for the night. There are a ton of nice hotels downtown, and it should be an easy place to hide.”

  “Can we see the cherry blossoms again before we go?” she asked suddenly, a softness creeping into her Arctic blue eyes.

  “As long as you don’t mind seeing them at night,” I said as I started the beamer.

  “No, that’s okay.”

  My phone buzzed as I pulled onto the highway. After a quick glance, I saw it was one of my co-wo
rkers, a guy named Dave. He was wondering if I could come in early tomorrow to cover his shift.

  Nope.

  I deleted the message.

  It was still hard for me to imagine that so much about my life had changed in such little time.

  If Grace hadn’t shown up, I would have gone in to work for Dave and just continued my humble, yet quite frankly, boring existence in New Haven.

  I would have continued to work at the Yale gift shop that also sold lamps. And I would have been working tirelessly on Breakpoint Online, a book that had already been written so many times in similar ways that no one would have given a shit about it.

  “Focus on the road, Writer Gideon,” Grace said.

  “Will do.” I gripped the steering wheel, smiling at its sleek leather texture and the way it felt in my hands. The BMW’s dashboard was lit up like a cyberpunk carnival, yet it was still minimal, avant-garde even.

  “Roof down?” I asked Grace.

  She glanced up at the roof and nodded. “We can see the stars if the roof is down.”

  “For sure. We’ll bring it down once the coast is clear.”

  It only took us about five minutes to get to Wooster Square. Once we slowed, I pulled the beamer in front of an Italian bakery and checked the center console for the convertible button. I assumed it was the button with the arrows surrounding the roof and pointing downwards.

  Bingo.

  “This is going to be cool,” I told her. “Trust me.” The mechanized roof whirred as it settled into the back. “Also, you should probably change forms real quick.”

  “To what?”

  If you’re thinking that I hadn’t really thought this through, you’re right.

  Here I was, riding around in a convertible BMW with the top down and a dangerous woman passed out in the backseat, not to mention the woman who had escaped some secret lab in the passenger seat, her blonde hair and features a beacon if there ever was one.

  “Let’s make this quick,” I told Grace as I turned my blinker on. “And change into anything you want, aside from me or my mom.”