Cherry Blossoms

“You’re telling me you think the world is a better place?”

“I do,” said Arthur. He kept his eyes on the road. Trevor put a foot up on the dashboard and admired his snakeskin cowboy boots.

“You’re unreal, man.”

“There is quantitative evidence.”

“I meant you. You’re unreal. Didn’t know there were any optimistic demons.”

“What department are you with?” Asked Arthur.

“I was,” Trevor corrected, “with Chromatic Repetition and Opaque Audio.”

“Torturing the damned or creating Earth artifacts?”

“Both! I was Employee of the Millennium a while back.”

“Well, I’m from accounting, and trust me, the world is better than it’s ever been.”

They pulled up to a red light, and the sleek, black Mustang growled to a stop. Arthur pulled out his little black notebook. He started flipping through the pages, each one covered in thousands of perfectly drawn tick marks. On one of the last pages, the ticks stopped after a few rows and in the space below was their destination - 1778 Tankbart Court. Trevor pulled his phone out of his blazer’s breast pocket, unlocked it, and howled. Arthur gawked at Trevor’s rainbow mohawk as it scraped back and forth against the roof.

“Hot dog! Twenty thousand dollars and a bank account!”

Trevor shoved the phone in Arthurs’s face. Arthur rolled his eyes back to the road.

“If we survive, what are you gonna do with your twenty grand?” asked Trevor.

The light turned green, and Arthur focused on his driving. Trevor continued.

“I’m gonna eat at one of those military chicken joints. And I’m going to buy spiders. Oh! And I’m going to get some stocks! Don’t know what they are, but I’ve had a lot of folks come my way that loved them.”

“Sounds like a great time,” said Arthur.

“What about you? C’mon Arty, spill it. We’ll probably get our atoms melted before we can spend any of it.”

Trevor wasn’t wrong, this was a suicide mission, but Arthur still hoped. He pictured viridian hills and golden savannahs. He wondered if he’d be awed by the Grand Canyon or Everest. He thought about what a blueberry muffin or chocolate might taste like. He imagined Japanese cherry blossoms.

“Tapaneez terry bossoms?” Trevor was tugging on the stud in his tongue.

“Huh?” Arthur snapped out of it.

“You said Japanese cherry blossoms.”

“They’re some pink thing,” Arthur staggered. “Honestly, I hadn’t thought about it much.”

“I can tell from that skinsuit,” snarked Trevor, who had moved on to tugging his eyelids up and down. “What inspired all that beige?”

“I saw a guy on the cover of those pulp coupon magazines when I landed.” Trevor crowed and drummed his knees.

“No kidding?! I invented those! Destroys the environment and fills those mailboxes. Best part is they’re almost impossible to stop!”

Arthur turned onto Carvell Boulevard and slowed down. After mouthing numbers to himself, he rhetorically asked, “Why aren’t the addresses on these houses bigger?”

“Ask the Deuniformed Scale Department,” said Trevor.

“I’ll be sure to do that. We’re here.”

Arthur pulled over and cut the engine. Trevor had moved on to poking his teeth with his lips peeled back.

“Arthur, why are you doing this?”

“I have no idea,” Arthur lied. “You?”

“Sounded exciting,” said Trevor, slapping the visor closed. “And when, well if, another book is written, I’ll be in it.” He put his hands up and constructed an invisible marquee. “Trevor, Messenger of Oblivion, Harbinger of the End, Rouser of the Devil.”

“You’re in it for the glory?”

Trevor pulled his leg in and sat on it so he could face the driver’s seat.

“Sure. Why not?”

“As good a reason as any,” Arthur replied. The two stepped out of the car and onto the parkway. “Sounds like you enjoyed your work, though.”

“I did,” Trevor chuckled. “A lot. But once the apocalypse kicks off, no one is going to remember the guy who created the drive time commute, ya know?”

The house was identical to the ones on either side of it, save the plastic siding’s color.

“Arthur, why are you doing this? Really.”

Arthur decided he could tell a half-truth. He opened up his notebook to a page of tick marks and held it out to Trevor.

“The world is a better place than it’s ever been. I used to fill twenty of these a day. Over the last half millennia, I’ve needed fewer and fewer. Fifty years ago, I was down to less than ten notebooks a day. Now I’d be surprised if I filled one in a week. Most people believe the world is coming apart at the seams, and maybe they’re right. The math tells me the existential dread far outweighs reality. There are fewer murders, kidnappings, burglaries… you name the misdeed and it’s measurably lower than ever before in human history. This is literally the best it’s ever been, and I wanted...” Arthur heard birds singing and looked up. The masterful choreography of their dance brought a gentle smile to his face. When they collectively landed on a powerline, he grinned. “I wanted to see it before it’s gone, that’s all.”

Trevor’s head tiled and his open mouth sagged in the same direction as his mohawk.

“Arty, you’re one strange demon, you know that?”

Arthur threw the notebook through the car’s open window and headed for the house. Trevor continued.

“What are the chances this little girl unintentionally decimates the entire neighborhood when we tell her she’s Satan reborn?”

“I can’t imagine news like that does anything good for a person’s emotional stability. And seeing as how you and I are the only ones to volunteer, I think most of our colleagues agree.”

The wooden boards of the porch creaked and moaned. The screen door screeched and hissed before resting against Arthur’s shoulder. He knocked on the door with firm, deliberate strikes. Trevor pulled the wrapper off a lollipop, plopped it into his mouth, and leaned back with one arm on the railing.

“Where did you even get that?” Arthur couldn’t help himself.

“Took it from some kid when we stopped for gas.” The lollipop clicked around Trevor’s mouth.

Muffled footsteps approached the other side of the door, the lock clicked, and the hinges squealed. An elderly woman glared at them from beneath a chain lock.

“It says no solicitations, right there, in the big red letters on the door,” she said.

“Sorry to bother you,” said Arthur, “We’re not selling anything. We’re looking for Agatha Mary Marose. Can we speak with her?”

“No one here with that name.” Trevor’s mouth was ready to speak before she finished.

“Are you sure, lady?” Her eyes tightened and her nose flared.

“I think I’d be the expert on who lives in my house!” She slammed the door and the lock clicked. Arthur’s brow furrowed, and he rubbed his mouth. Trevor sucked down spit and the lollipop rattled against his teeth some more.

“Took them twelve years of searching to find her,” said Arthur, “maybe HQ got it wrong. She might not even be born yet.”

“No way, man, she’s gotta be alive, way too many omens. The year she was born alone had cannibalism, total economic collapse, and a sloshy ice cap. And then there was that tsunami, and whole continents are freezing on the regular, and now there’s a literal plague. Not to mention the staggering amount of exotic pets.”

“You’re right. Still, they had to comb through billions of people to find someone who fit the profile. They probably got that wrong.”

“I’ll call it in,” said Trevor.

“You’ll what?”

“I’ll call HQ. That’s why they gave me this phone, in case something goes wrong. You're logistics; I'm comms.”

Arthur had wondered why the mission required two people. An oversight. Trevor pulled up his contacts, selected the only one in it, jumped down onto the concrete, and gestured for Arthur to follow him to the car.

In all the time he counted the damned, the endless interrogations and interviews, verifying the soul was the correct one, Arthur could never wrap his mind around what any of them meant by panic. He couldn’t hear. His heart slammed against the inside of his chest. His stomach crunched into itself. He finally understood why this is what so many of them felt just before they died. The chrome from the door handle slipped from his fingers the first time he tried to open it. He nearly smacked his head on the frame as he gradually came to rest in the bucket seat. Trevor was sprawled out over the passenger side, one hand on the phone and the other on the lollipop. The ringing from the speaker stopped and a fuzzy voice began to speak.

“Heylo. Yeah, it’s me. Arty and I are here, and the big kahuna isn’t.” The speaker barked. Trevor winced.

“Relax! Hold on, hold on!” Trevor put the phone against his lap and looked up through the windshield at the street sign - Carvell Boulevard. He shifted his weight and his aloof demeanor faded. He looked past Arthur’s face through the driver’s side window at the house and squinted - 55. All jest vanished from his face, and he locked onto Arthur, whose face was as pale as the knuckles clenching the leather steering wheel. The hard candy cracked in Trevor’s mouth, and he dragged the phone up to his ear. Arthur opened his mouth to speak, but no words emerged. The muffled voice spoke and waited. Trevor said nothing. The voice crackled again, louder this time, and Trevor finally moved the receiver over his mouth.

“Yes ma’am, we’re at 1778 Tankbart Court, and the kid’s not here.”

Arthur blinked. Trevor didn’t. The voice shouted for an eternity before stopping abruptly.

“Understood,” Trevor replied. He hit the disconnect button on the screen.

“Trevor, I can…”

“What’s a cherry blossom, anyway? And if there are Japanese ones, there’s gotta be like, Alaskan ones, and German ones, and butter ones, right?”

Arthur gaped in bewildered silence.

“They’ll call us back once they figure out where the kid’s at. Said to get comfy while they double-check everything. Took ‘em twelve years last time?”

Arthur nodded, barely.

“Plenty of time to find out about those blossoms then.”

Without waiting for a response, Trevor pushed the car door open, slammed it shut, and leaned down with his hand on the roof.

“Have fun, Arthur.”

“Why are you doing this?” asked Arthur.

Trevor shrugged and pursed his lips.

“No new souls coming through the machine sounds boring. I am in it for the glory, sure, but really, I just wanted to enter the void on my own terms. The end is in motion and it ain’t gonna stop at humans. Can’t hurt to take time for ourselves before it kicks into overdrive.”

“Ourselves?” asked Arthur. Trevor smiled wide and shook his head.

“I said I want to go on my terms; I never said it had to be today. I might die of embarrassment, though.”

“Huh?”

“Lying never even crossed my mind. Deception is a major tool in my toolbox, and you, the bean counter, was the one who realized he could take the deal and then bail.”

Arthur felt a strange warmth in the center of his chest.

“When, well if, they write the book, you mind letting me take some of the credit for pulling the wool over management’s head?”

“Deal,” Arthur replied.

Trevor patted the hardtop and said, “Safe travels, Arty!”

“You too.”

Trevor flicked the soggy white stick from the lollipop away, then skipped up onto the curb behind the car before eventually disappearing around a corner.

“Hey!” shouted the old lady from her porch. “Get out of here! I’ll call the cops!”

“Sorry,” yelled Arthur, making a polite wave. He slid the key into the ignition and cranked it forward. The engine roared to life, and the hair on his arms stood up. He took in the cool air. His cheeks started to hurt.

”So this must be joy.”