Cherry Blossom Girls Box Set

by Harmon Cooper

  I didn’t know if the voice was Grace’s or mine. I was too shaken up, especially when Angel wrapped one arm under mine, and tossed me up to the ceiling. I didn’t break through or anything, but fuck, if cracking my head on the hard surface didn’t rattle my brain.

  “More?” he asked, when I crashed back down.

  Wheezing now, I still wasn’t able to get a full breath in. My body ached, and my nose continued gushing blood. I spit some of it out; a graffiti splatter of crimson.

  “Are you ready to help Mother, or should I continue?”

  “You still call her Mother even though you’re fucking her?” I considered that for a moment. America once had a vice president who did that. “Okay, that’s okay, I guess.” I wiped more blood on my sleeve.

  “You don’t know when to shut up, do you?” He put his foot on my throat. “Last chance.”

  “That’s enough, Angel,” Mother said, re-entering the room. “We’ll have to work on Grace before we work on him. She’s the one preventing me from going any further.”

  “Are you sure I can’t do it?” he asked, his foot pressing harder into my neck.

  “That’s a primitive way to kill him, darling.” She moved over to us and took his hand. Angel removed his foot and stepped beside her, wrapping an arm around her waist. “I promise you’ll be the one to kill him, but not before I get the information I need. Think of a better way though; something that will last longer and hurt more. Snapping his neck is too quick.”

  “You two are some sick fucks,” I whispered through the blood dripping from my nose.

  Mother turned to me. “He’s good with insults, but not much else.”

  She walked over to the door and knocked on it twice.

  “To be continued,” she told me as the mustached merc entered the room with a black bag. He moved over to me, sat me up, and shoved it over my face.

  Another man joined him and together, they took me back to my cell.

  Once I was there, they had me stand with my back to the door so they could uncuff me. They kept the black covering on my head and left the room, slamming the door behind them.

  I took the covering off and found a tray of food on the bed – an apple with a bite taken out of it, and a piece of bread with a loogie on top.

  There was also a glass of water that looked suspiciously yellow, so I poured it out, flushed the toilet twice, and waited for the toilet water to fill up.

  Yep. I drank toilet water and used some of it to clean the blood off my lips and face.

  It wasn’t too bad and since I was hungry, I devoured the apple and even ate around the glob of snot and spit on the bread.

  I was probably going to die soon.

  “You are probably going to die soon.”

  There, I said it. And I was ninety percent certain at the time that it was going to happen. So the question then became: How did I want to go out?

  Gideon from a few weeks ago – hell, Gideon from a few hours ago – would have curled up on the bed and cried until he had to drink more toilet water to replenish his tears.

  “And what good would that do?”

  So, I decided to accept my fate. If this was my last day on earth, and I was likely to die today or tomorrow at the hands of a superpowered motherfucker …

  I laughed.

  Angel really was a superpowered motherfucker, in every sense of the phrase.

  That got my author brain rolling.

  Would that make an interesting story? I thought as I lay back on the bed. A superpowered child who came from the seed of a kinda hot – not going to lie, not on my deathbed – woman who groomed him into becoming her sex object.

  It would definitely rile some folks, that was for sure. If the sexes had been reversed, it would almost be a gymnast in a controversial Olympic coach biopic. But making it a woman as the older figure changed the dynamics.

  Oedipus as a superpowered guy struggling with the fact that he’s tagging his mom?

  Damn, I thought as I lay there, I really need to get this idea down.

  I’d definitely add stats to the book and some type of game mechanics. That was my schtick. Maybe every mother he fucked gave him more power and he could level up.

  “That’s one powerful motherfucker,” I whispered, cracking up at my own joke. What I wouldn’t give to share the idea with Luke, just so he could give me a WTF-are-you-talking-about face.

  I could see it now.

  The book begins from young Angel’s perspective. Let’s call him Angel Rex, in reference to Oedipus, of course. I’d put a Hamlet reference in there too, but shit, I would have probably lost half my audience on just the Oedipus reference.

  Or maybe.

  I didn’t know how many sci-fi fantasy readers are big into archetypes.

  Anyway, it didn’t matter. This was my vision, and it would start with young Angel training.

  I pictured him training, kicking ass, beating up MercSecure, then mommy dearest coming and patting him on the head, rubbing the muscles on his neck and chest, maybe putting some conditioner in his hair.

  She waits until he’s older, of course, … well, old enough to get a decent-sized boner. So, let’s say fourteen. No, fifteen – don’t want to gross people out too much or turn them away.

  “This is such a stupid story,” I whispered.

  Go on …

  Nope, not Grace’s voice, just my own dumb ass.

  Plot the story, escape from here.

  “Grace?” I opened my eyes and looked around the room. “Are you there?”

  Are you there? I thought.

  Please, just think something for me.

  It was her!

  Grace!

  Please, just think something for me.

  I got a sudden feeling that they were hurting her, somewhere near me, and that my crazy thoughts were soothing her in some way.

  In that case …

  I envisioned a scene in which Angel first learns to fly. He’s sitting with Mother in his room – no, her room, on her bed, and it’s the first time she touches him.

  “You are one bad mother …” I whispered.

  Well, fifteen-year-old Angel gets a raging boner and that’s just about the time his flight abilities take shape. The superpowered motherfucker comes with just one touch on his inner thigh and blasts off Mother’s bed, through the ceiling, and out into the stratosphere.

  He hovers up there for a bit, looking at all the lights below and realizing he didn’t have pants on and that he’d made a sticky mess of his pubes.

  Got to trim those, Angel thinks.

  Yeah, I’d definitely put that line in, something a little funny and awkward.

  This is such a funny story.

  Grace again.

  It’s dedicated to you, Grace.

  So I thought some more about the story, hoping to entertain her as best I could.

  Who was the bad guy? Child Protective Services? For sure. They have guys in black – because what police state doesn’t have guys in black? – trying to take him from Mother. Thing is, CPS is also planning to exploit him, turn him into a worker at the secret gloryhole they run in Malaysia.

  Why Malaysia?

  And why a gloryhole? No idea. Just seems like a good twist.

  As for the location, it could be any Southeast Asian country, could be anywhere. Just want to keep it interesting, right?

  So CPS is trying to take Angel away from Mother so they can turn him into a sex worker. That’s it! CPS, while they seem like the good guys, are actually the bad guys. The twist!

  And where are the stats? I imagine Luke asking me.

  Well, like I said, he gets a point for every mother he fucks, but since he only fucks his own mother, she has to change forms to trick the game into giving him stats.

  Wait, the game doesn’t know?

  Dammit, Luke, I’m making this up as I go along, don’t complicate things for me!

  And she’s a shifter?

  You bet your ass she’s a shifter, as shifter as
American Pie, whatever that means. Just like Grace.

  Just like you, Grace.

  I yawned. I didn’t know how I could get so tired working out my own story, but I was definitely starting to drift off. I stretched on the hard bed, trying to get comfortable.

  Damn, did my body hurt.

  I was just about to imagine how Angel frees himself from CPS and is rewarded with a little ass play from Mother when I saw a flash in the room.

  Dorian appeared, a look of abject fear on her face.

  “It worked,” she said.

  “Dorian?” I gulped, unsure if I was dreaming or not.

  “We need to go, Gideon, now.”

  “Why should I –”

  But Dorian didn’t answer. She reached out, touched my hand, and we disappeared.

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Back and Forth

  Note to reader: teleportation is not for the faint of heart. It literally feels as if every fiber from your body is being stripped away, shot through some type of intergalactic portal, gargled by a guy who’s missing a couple of teeth, and reassembled on the other side.

  All this to say, Dorian and I materialized in what looked like a hotel room.

  My first reaction was to run to the nearest restroom and vomit up the apple and bread I ate earlier. But I kept it down, my urge to vomit replaced by sheer anger at Dorian.

  “You betrayed us!” I shouted, my voice wavering. No, I hadn’t put two and two together yet, and I still wasn’t sure if this was real or not.

  It could be a dream, I thought. It must be a dream. Kill her!

  Dorian raised an eyebrow at me. “I just saved you.”

  “I know what I saw,” I told her, raising my fists. Not that trying to strike her would do any good; still, the gesture felt right.

  “Try it,” she said, lifting her paintbrush to her mouth. “But before you do, think about what I just did.”

  “I … I …”

  Maybe she was right. Why would she have teleported me out of there if …

  “But I know what I saw,” I finally said, lowering my fists.

  We were definitely in a hotel room; another look around confirmed that for me. But I didn’t know where the hotel was, and weakness from either the teleportation or the fact that Angel had pretty much handed me my ass had started to set in.

  “Just hear me out,” Dorian said. She took a step closer to me. There was something behind her dark eyes that I instantly trusted, even though every instinct in my body was screaming for me not to believe her.

  I saw what she’d done. End of story.

  “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “You don’t know anything.”

  “You don’t play the best tough guy, did you know that?” She let her ponytail out and studied me a moment. Then she flexed her fingers, widening the elastic band and swiftly tied her hair into a new ponytail. She was still in her post-goth punk rock getup: a leather jacket, black shorts over fishnet tights, and black boots.

  “I go back and forth between being convincingly aggressive and not at all,” I said with a sigh. “But that’s beside the point. What happened back at Butler’s house?”

  “It was Veronique and Grace’s idea. We’d already discussed it.”

  “Discussed what? No one told me shit!” I kicked the bed for emphasis, which only served to hurt my foot. Damn, I wish I had superhuman strength.

  “If for some reason they came for us, I was to act like I was on their side, that you three had kidnapped me. And that’s what I did. When they start attacking us, I teleported to one of the upstairs rooms. I waited for a moment and then burst out through the window. Why did you think I was bloody?”

  Was she bloody? I tried to remember if I’d seen blood on her but couldn’t recall. The only thing I could remember was Veronique’s bloody face as Dorian presented her to me.

  “Why did you burst out of the window?”

  “I thought it would look more convincing. As soon as I got to the ground, I started fighting on their side. There was nothing I could do.”

  “Why didn’t you teleport us out of there?”

  “Do you know how much energy it takes for me to teleport? I can only do it in spurts, and by spurts, I mean it’s usually one or two times before I get burned out.”

  I thought of her stats. “I wonder if that’s something I can adjust …”

  Then another thought came to me: All of my stuff – all of my life, pretty much – had been at Butler’s place, which meant they’d most likely taken it as evidence.

  That meant they could get my laptop …

  But if that was the case, they wouldn’t have needed me.

  It must have been destroyed in the attack. It made sense; there’d been walls crumbling down and explosions inside the house.

  My laptop had been on the table. I remembered that happy moment we were having when we were attacked. It was like we were a family or something, and then suddenly the world exploded, and the men came running in with their weapons, and the helicopters and the flying motherfucker appeared.

  Damn, it felt good calling Angel a motherfucker.

  I wasn’t normally that vulgar, but the nickname just fit so damn well.

  I sat down on the bed as Dorian continued her story. “I promised them I would get you out first. That I would go for Veronique next, and then Grace.”

  “Are you serious?”

  The look of conviction on her face told me that she was indeed serious. The thing was, why would she go to all this effort just to double cross me again? It didn’t seem viable.

  I relaxed a little. Boy, did I relax a little. I’d been on swords and razor blades for the last twenty-four hours at least.

  “I think you could use some rest.”

  “I need some food and a shower and … I need a phone.”

  “I still have a phone,” she said.

  I asked for her phone, and she pulled it out of one of her jacket pockets. I turned it off and took the battery out.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “If they haven’t already found out that I’m gone, they’ll find out soon. And they’ll know there’s only one person on this earth who could get me out of a room like that, and it’s you.”

  She laughed a little. “There are more than one.”

  “More than one who can teleport?”

  “More people with superpowers who could probably get you out. That’s what this is all about, right? You’re going to expose them. Grace told me, you told me, and even Veronique believed it. Veronique never believed in anything when I knew her; she was a nihilist’s nihilist.”

  “I don’t know if I’d call her a nihilist, but she was definitely pretty stiff when we first met. Okay, so let’s see where we are. I need to get my bearings straight.”

  She sat on the bed next to me. “I’m guessing you have questions.”

  “I have a ton of questions, but I’ll keep it simple. First of all, where are we?”

  “Austin.”

  “And where did we come from? I mean, where is the military base that we are at?”

  “Camp Mabry, also in Austin.”

  “And Grace and Veronique are there as well?”

  Dorian nodded. “But I don’t know how long they’ll be there. We need to get Veronique first; that’s what they told me to do.”

  “When were you all having this conversation? I don’t seem to remember it ever happening. And why Veronique first?”

  “We had it while you were upstairs going through the guy’s stuff after I killed him. And Veronique is more helpful to us than Grace would be, that’s why.”

  “I beg to differ, and I’m not saying I’m having déjà vu here, but I literally just went through this a couple days back.”

  “Went through what?”

  “A breakout. We rescued Veronique. Just Grace and me.”

  “Did you rescue her from a military facility?”

  “No, not exactly, but paramilitary forces showed up. And that’s another
thing – I don’t want to have to rescue anyone again after this. I think it’s taken twenty years off my life trying to bust people out. We have to be smarter. We’re not supposed to be captured by these people.”

  “If we had been smarter, we would have left Butler's place.”

  It dawned on me at that very moment: It was Butler’s death that triggered the assault. It had to be.

  If Dorian didn’t say anything …

  “Before we continue, I just need to clarify something. Was it Butler who triggered that assault? Did it have something to do with his death?”

  She nodded. “We should have thought about that. The men I left with were talking about it, and yes, he had a fingerprint scanner that he pressed every night near his bed. He didn’t press it, and that was supposed to trigger an alarm and a release of all the data he’d accumulated. But the lawyer who held the data for Butler was also working for them – for Mother. So the lawyer told them about it, and they made their assault.”

  I exhaled slowly. I had no idea how this was going to play out, but our prospects looked worse with each passing minute.

  “I have a little money in cash,” she told me. “Actually, I have a lot of money. One of the things I did when I went upstairs during the attack was take some of the cash you guys were hoarding. I think it’s about five thousand dollars, maybe more.” She reached into her pocket and took out a large roll of cash bound with a rubber band.

  “Good, that should help some.”

  “I need some time to rest before I teleport again, and you look like …” She smiled, showing her dimples as she did so. “You know what? You look bad, but I’m surprised you’re even alive. I wanted to come sooner. I even tried to teleport there and back, but I hit the wrong cell, and I had to recharge. It takes a lot more, if not all, of my energy to teleport. If I could just paint dinosaurs with gun arms out of kinetic energy and send them off, I would; I’d be able to do that all day. But teleportation is hard.”

  “How will we get Veronique then?”

  “She’ll be easier to get than you because you were in a long holding block. There were other cells, and as I said, I exhausted myself checking some of them. Back and forth. It was brutal. The hardest part of my teleportation was getting into the complex, and then I moved through some of the cells and got out before I lost energy. I got lucky this last time when I found you.”