From mixing and mashing a God Tier fetish and Psycho Bullet Festival!
Disclaimer: This work contains adult materials including strong language, sexual themes, and heavy-handed political overtones. This work is not suitable for minors. Reader discretion is advised.
TSF Series #009: That Time I Became a Cactus Waifu
Date: June 21, 2014
Location: Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
The distorted horizon stood listlessly before me. Just as it did yesterday and the day before that. Nothing to see. Nothing to make note of. Nothing beyond the ocean of granular rubble laid before me, its bright color allowing it to reflect the radiance and heat of the flaming orb hanging above my head. I took a moment to examine my person and found no shadow. Meaning this relentless onslaught of heat was at its halfway point, and the reprieve that is the night would be with me in a matter of… 7 hours or so.
I could not last that long. Hunger, ill-fitting boots, aching muscles, and the threat of dehydration had all waned on my person, and the closest thing to a happy thought rolling around my mind was the fantasy of laying down into the sand, immersing myself in it, and staying there until my body ceased to function. Until I was free from this mortal coil, this hell I had subjected myself to as I believed it to be preferable to death. It takes seconds for darkness to embrace you if you go out with a bullet. Minutes at most if you are desperate enough to use a knife. But if you choose to tread and toil through the wastes, it is a days-long process, one where your body slowly decays and bakes under the immense heat, with nothing to cast shade beyond the rubble that was able to withstand the storm.
My name is Zedaki. I am a refugee from Ukraine. Not that it really matters. The banner of ‘refugee’ describes so many people that it does not matter what your name is or where you originally hailed from. As far as they are concerned, we are just foreigners— desperate and piteous little urchins that come crawling from the dying husk that once made up the majority of the world and now… now it is dead. A vast expanse of fallen nations, with everything of substance destined to fall into disarray and ruin.
It did not need to be this way. It should not have been this way. But it is. All because of a weapon that should have never been made, and men who lacked both the sense and the morals to refrain from using it. Their stupidity, their malice for others due to the borders they were born within, forever doomed this Earth.
They called it a D-Bomb. A Desertification Bomb. A biological weapon designed to unleash a virus across a large landmass, rendering it ill-fit to sustain life, with all plant life, fungi, and soil decaying into granular sand at an alarming rate. It was developed by an American defense contractor, and shortly after the weapon’s first functional prototype was developed and it was brought up to review by the higher-ups, they unanimously shut the project down, recognizing the long-term damage such a weapon could cause. It was like the act of salting the Earth, except the soil was not merely tainted, it was decimated into something with no future and no potential salvation.
That is where the story should have ended, but while the higher-ups had at least a semblance of decency in their bodies, enough to cancel such a project, they did not ensure that the prototype or the related documentation were disposed of properly. The resources were placed into storage, in accordance with company policy, but when it came time to move these materials, the transporters were intercepted, robbed, and the weapon fell into the hands of a group known as the Dukes of Zil.
An American Private Military Company that was led by radicals who, when faced with a time of relative peace, sought to stir the flames of war while furthering their destructive nationalistic beliefs by bringing the fight to another country. On April 17th, 2011, a small squad developed a modified and reconstructed version of the D-Bomb to a moderately sized farm in rural China. They developed the bomb as a trial run, intended to only blight a single square kilometer with desertification while leaving the surrounding farmlands no worse for wear. To say they were playing with fire would be an understatement. They were dabbling with revolutionary and under-developed technology that, even upon recruiting a highly accomplished team, they did not fully understand.
And they fucked up.
What was meant to only ravage a single square kilometer spread to ten within a matter of days. And within a month, it had expanded to hundreds of square kilometers, all unable to sustain any kind of life. Whenever it seemed like things were under control, like the virus would stop there, it advanced. It was unfettered by any walls, cities, or settlement, and so long as there was land before it, its domination would continue. It took a year before China had completely succumbed to desertification.
By the second anniversary of the bombing, things had gotten exponentially worse. Desertification had taken hold of everywhere between the Sinai Peninsula and Moscow. As Asia fell, Africa and Europe scrambled for any potential solution to keep the threat of desertification at bay. Then, by the third anniversary, 96% of mainland Afro-Eurasia has been subjected to desertification. Refugees that had fled to these nations were forced to flee once more, and with there not being enough homes, food, or resources to sustain the influx of people who fled to island nations, the Americas, or Australia, hundreds of millions were left to toil their time in the expansive desert that used to represent the over 50% of the planet, that used to house over 80% of the population. The cornerstone and center of the Earth. The place where humanity was born. It was now a husk.
I had spent nearly 18 months on the run, scrambling from one opportunity to another, striving for a way to keep my family safe… but now it is just me. The ones bound to me by blood, by experience, and even by convenience had all left me behind in their own way. Now… Now I cannot even safely say if there is anybody left on this rock with me. It has been weeks since I spoke to another soul, and those who I did cross paths with had succumbed to madness. I never wished to bring the end to the life of another man, much less a young girl, but with her rushing at me with a knife, consumed by rage, dehydration, and hunger, I was left with no choice but to penetrate her skull with lead. And in order to not fall down a similar path, I could not bury her body either.
She kept me going for a week before she spoiled, and now, with no remaining civilization before me, with only the vague goal of the ocean guiding me northward through this desert, I have to ask myself if it was really worth it. To do the inhumane just so I could allow the light of my life to burn just a little bit longer when I knew— I knew as I was grimacing at the foul taste of her flesh, that my life had no future. Immigration limits had been imposed, and there was no way a man like me could cause a nation to bend its rules. I was not exceptional, so I did not deserve to be an exception. I was just a man who toiled his way to moderate comfort, never excelling in a single field, or being much beyond average at anything. And with my future limited by my age— I should have turned fifty-two a matter of days ago if my count is correct— perhaps it would be best if I just l embraced my sandy grave.
The thought of crumbling where I was and letting all the turmoil and pain wash over my body was an enticing one, but I discarded such despair as I ascended one of the billowing dunes in my path, and looked onwards to see structures within a stone’s throw away from me. It was a town, quaint and unremarkable, but it was an oasis in my current state. With an objective in mind, my body was able to channel itself with adrenaline, and spurred me to clumsily jog over to the nearest dwelling, a home.
Like most buildings I came across, it had been ravaged by the virus. Its wooden door was flimsily hanging off its frames, the scattered rocks spread by the relentless sandstorms had caused the windows to crack if not break entirely, and the floors were carpeted by a sheet of sand. I’d say it was hard to believe that this all happened in a matter of months, but I had long since accepted the power of desertification.
Upon shutting the door as best I could, nearly causing it to fly off its flimsy hinges, I breathed heavily, taking in the coolness of the air around me, and basking momentarily in the comfort of shade. I placed my back against a wall and slid to the floor, wondering if I should simply sleep to avoid the heat and continue my trek throughout the night, but I feared that if I did go to sleep down, I would not wake up to see tomorrow.
I needed something in my stomach. Something to dampen my mouth. Something to give me the energy and determination needed to make a voyage to a coast, where the adverse effects of desertification were less notable, a food supply in the form of fish was theoretically available, plant life could prosper to an extent, and humanity had settled. It was a goal fueled by rumors and wishful thinking, but with no access to the internet or the news, it was all I could clench on. A pipedream that I would, in all likelihood, die trying to achieve. I groaned at my past self’s optimism for having ever believed such an idea.
After five minutes of rest, I stood up and began to search through the home in a vain attempt at scavenging. There was naught but crumbs strewn throughout the pantry, the refrigerator was barren, and the cabinets held a plentiful quantity of plastic bags, towels, and silverware, but nothing to eat or drink. Distraught, I made my way to a vacant windowsill and drew the curtains. The blinding sunlight washed out my vision for a moment before my eyes were able to focus on the sea of dwellings I could scavenge through like a common vermin. Though, I was dubious of them being any different than this home. Few would be foolish enough to leave food before fleeing their homes like this, and even if they were, scavengers came in waves, and it was a near certainty that another desperate fool had already searched these homes, found what was left behind, and left nothing in their wake.
My bitterness and exhaustion urged me to stay where I was, but I still stepped outside and looked around at the town, the sand-coated buildings, the barely identifiable streets, lawns, and sidewalks, the metal poles defiantly stretching out into the sky, the husks of trees that could not survive in this climate, and the lone cactus that stood—
“What? Why’s there a fucking cactus out there?” I spat out in a slurred voice.
There it was, a vibrant piece of green vegetation that stood defiantly in this landscape of white and tan. A Saguaro cactus, well over two meters tall, bearing two arms and boasting a number of vibrant red fruits scattered across its top. I had been told that it was not possible for even desert fauna or weeds to grow in these desolate climates, but there it was, right before me, a fruit-bearing plant, the most inviting sight I could have hoped to imagine at this dark moment in my life. Salvation was before me, the potential to live another day was no more than twenty meters away, and I once again summoned up the hope and drive to sprint towards the cactus, where I clenched a ripen red fruit and bit into it like a wild animal, gnawing through the skin and stabbing myself with its spiny stem. I did not care. I had something sweet and moist throughout my mouth and swallowed it without hesitation. I continued this process until I had consumed 6 of the fruits scattered around the top of this cactus. My body was too dehydrated to produce tears, but the happiness swelling across my being was beyond anything I had felt in years.
Refusing to waste any part of this opportunity, I began to pluck the remaining fruits, filling my small and tattered leather bag with nearly a dozen of these morsels, hoping that these would be enough to keep me going until fortune favored me yet again. But as I began to walk away, satisfied with my haul, I paused and asked myself why I felt the need to leave behind perfectly good food.
While cacti like this was supposedly a bitter and foul-tasting piece of vegetation, it was better than nothing. If it could fill me up and imbue me with nutrients, then why should I squander it? Because it is doused in danger? Because it would be hard to cultivate? No. I could not accept the prospect of wasting anything. I had to make the most of this opportunity and to do that, I had to harvest this cactus for all it was worth.
After a quick trip through the home I already pillaged, I returned to the cactus with pink rubber gloves adorning my hands, and a large kitchen knife in one of them. Minutes later, an arm of the cactus had been fully shaven of its outer skin and spines, and in my hands rested a succulent chunk of cactus that I wasted little time digging my teeth into, relishing in the liquid that danced across my mouth, and chewing vigorously to not linger of the plain yet sour taste. I lost track of how much cactus I consumed, and only ceased my manic display when my depraved stomach spoke out against my indulgence, forcing me to stop eating.
With an aching stomach, I limped over to the house with my cactus chunk in tow, which I placed limply on a table after half-heartedly wiping away the sand. Unable to travel, and unable to eat, I made my way to the decaying couch, using my cloak as an impromptu blanket as I slept. As I faded into unconsciousness, I began to make plans. I would continue my trek come nightfall, where the humidity I had slogged through would be replaced with crisp cool air. The thought of traveling on a full stomach with plenty of food in tow was a pleasant one, and it was as my mind indulged in this fantasy that I fell asleep with a full belly for the first time in months.
I woke up as the setting sun shone against my face, urging me to get up and prepare to take my leave. A few minutes later, I was on the loosely defined northward trail once more, with my bag struggling to contain the fruits and one and a half cactus arms I had harvested. I had contemplated taking the entirety of the plant before shoving off, but traveling with a human-sized cactus trapped to your back is a bad idea for several reasons, and with days worth of food, I was confident in my ability to make decent headway as I walked throughout the cold tranquil desert, looking up at the unimpeded beauty of the night’s sky, and enjoying the radiant moonlight that shone with the stars.
For the first time in what had to be months, a smile emerged on my face as I thanked the powers that be for my good fortune. This happiness flowed through me for several hours until it was disturbed by an aching sensation burgeoning in my intestines. It came at me fast and caught me off-guard, causing me to stumble on a sand-drenched chunk of rubble strewn about the unrecognizable wastes I wandered through.
Still, this was not enough to douse my flames of contentment at the moment, which continued throughout the night, and until I was forced to adjust my eyes to the rising sun, whose vibrant orange rays made me wish I had snagged some sunglasses while I had the chance, instead of just a pair of goggles.
I contemplated my day’s schedule as the sun rose, but with only the remnants of a highway in sight, and no readily available sources of shade, I was left with little choice but to continue heading north, hoping that luck would follow me today, and the next, and so on. Though, that plan almost immediately hit a snag as I noticed a rigidness developing in my legs. It was easy to dismiss this as a muscle cramp or general soreness initially, but with each step, a surreal sensation throughout my lower limbs only intensified.
As a disgruntled muttering escaped my lips, I tore off a boot from one leg and peeled away at my well-worn pants and socks, where I noticed a disturbingly green hue to my leg.
“Shit,” I thought to myself, “I can’t afford to get an infection at a time like this.”
As I continued to poke and feel my leg, I became skeptical that it truly was a mere infection. My skin felt tender, firm, I could see faint vertical lines from underneath it, and as I brushed my hand against it, my leg hair fell off with no resistance. Perplexed, I began to take off my other boots and pants to investigate the rest of my lower body, confirming that the greenish hue had enveloped my legs from my feet to past my boxers. Pulling those down revealed that the greenness had invaded my dick and balls, and looked to be crawling up the rest of my torso.
“The hell is going on here!?” I shouted.
The answers to my query did not make themselves clear even as I discarded the remainder of my clothing. My shirt, my cloak, my hat, my bag, and my goggles, leaving me completely naked, in the middle of a desert, looking over and patting my body like a maniac. This did nothing to impede the progress of the green tint coursing throughout my body. If anything, the spread was only expedited once I discarded my clothes. I needed an explanation, an answer to how this was happening, and the only thing I could point a finger at my discarded bag, and the contents left sprawling in the sand.
While I lacked any frame of reference for what a cactus was supposed to taste like, what I ate certainly did not seem to be toxic or poisonous. But in a world as fucked as this one, I was willing to believe that a regular-ass cactus had the potential to do something like this to me. I began to wonder what I could or even should do, and attempted to pace while I thought, trying to ignore the garish ball of fire rising in the distance. However, I began to struggle with even that. My legs were stiff, my knees especially, and with each step, it became harder and harder to move. I attempted to sit down, but my joints refused to let me do so, forcing me to stand.
Out of frustration, I scrunched up my hands into a fist, jamming my nails into my palms, and hearing a distinctive crunching sound after a while. I looked down at my green-hued digits and saw a pale liquid release from my body, unlike the crimson blood I had anticipated, and as I urged my fingers to free themselves from their current position, they remained static. Confused, angry, and more than a tiny bit frightened, I looked down at myself once more and saw that my legs had transformed further.
The creases were now poking out of my skin, I was unable to so much as bend my knees, and the greenish hue had evolved to a saturated, vibrant, and inhuman shade. With my fingers locked in an immobile grip, I brought my knuckle to a leg as a means of investigating them further, and I shivered as I felt the firm smooth texture of my leg. I had been denying it, but it was now clear to me what was happening. I was turning into a cactus.
It sounded nonsensical. It sounded moronic. It sounded fucking retarded. But as I saw the transformation spread across my person, as I sifted a hand through my long platinum blonde hair and came away with an arm laced with strands, I could not refute this observation. And with this revelation came a question of the utmost importance. What should I do now? As I struggled to move my feet from the ground or nudge my legs more than an inch, I came with the realization that the answer was… nothing.
I was standing in a barren wasteland, naked as can be, slowly turning into a cactus as I looked onwards at the rising sun, its rays warming my body as my arms twitched and vibrated with dread.
I cried. I laughed. I released a hysterical howl that flowed through the desert as a gust of wind tore the remaining hair off my body, carrying it away into the beyond. The coarse sand brushing against my body only affirmed how deeply the transformation had gone, with what was once this brash and irritating substance now brushing off of my firm plant-like exterior with ease. I did not look down at myself as the transformation continued. I could not bear to see my body in an even less recognizable state, and simply shut my eyes as the sensations overcame me.
As my legs became rigid and immobile, lacking the same warmth that my fat and muscles provided, and were replaced entirely with a thick uniform trunk that lacked the same interworking components of an animal. Sensation and feeling still reverberate through them, and I could even faintly feel my body extend into the underground through what I assumed to be roots, but what I felt down there was not a human body.
The transformation then rose up to my crotch, or, more specifically, my dick. Through the magic of chemicals rushing through my body and my very cellular composition being transformed at a rapid rate, my dick had become hard. And with no help or aid from my hands, it ejaculated before me, releasing a series of deliberate powerful bursts that scattered onto the sand below, bearing with it a sweet and tangy scent. The act of cumming helped drown out and repress the horror that was assaulting my mind as I came to terms with my bizarre means of death— becoming a literal fucking vegetable. And as I felt my shrinking penis grow smaller and smaller, well beyond its usual flaccid state and into nothingness, with my testicles soon following suit, I could not muster any anger.
Instead, I had been broken down to a point of acceptance and was drowning my sorrows with happy memories of my dick and I… only for my thoughts to veer into a more pure direction as I began to recall the high points of my life. The happy memories across my five decades. The halcyon days of childish innocence. The smiling faces of my parents throughout 4 decades of their lives before being met with premature deaths. The feeling of pride that came with my first job. Meeting the woman who would become my wife. And holding my two children in my arms minutes after their births. I would not call my life remarkable or anything out of the ordinary… but it was pleasant. I achieved things. I existed as a functional part of a society that was now gone. And soon… I would be too.
As I idly reflected on my life, I failed to notice that my arms had become stuck in place, both pointing towards the sky with what were my elbows bent at 90-degree angles. I could move nothing but my head, and as I tilted my vision up, down, and all around, I only saw cactus. I opened my mouth to speak a few final words, but nothing came out. And after a few more vain attempts, I became unable to so much as open my lips. My darting tongue became static, and I could feel everything in the sensory-rich region known as my mouth became a uniform slate indistinguishable from the rest of my body.
My eyelids slowly collapsed on my vision as I stared off into the sun. The sounds of the wind were replaced with silence. And I felt the feeling of vegetative transformation finally encroach onto my brain. Everything that made me was in jeopardy and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it other than think a final few happy moments before my thoughts became clouded, and I was immersed in sensory darkness.
…Or so I thought.
Even though my brain and biology were, as far as I could tell, completely cactus, I could still feel, I could still think. I could feel the sun’s rays as they shined down onto my body, its warmth filling me with a sense of pleasure during the radiant day, while its absence filled me with fatigue during the listless night. I could sense the wind as it brushed past me. I could tell that I existed, that I had a place, and that I had roots. I recognized that I had grown spines after my initial transformation and that, through the energy of sunlight, and the sustenance of the occasional bout of rainfall, I was growing, I was sustaining myself. I was alive.
My thoughts beyond that mere recognition, however… were limited. It was almost like being in a dreamlike haze, where my low-level brain activity still expressed itself, but my thoughts were fleeting, half-formed, and trailed off after a sentence or two. With this limited activity, time lost its definite structure, collapsing into an ethereal concept as I existed in this lethargic daze of existence.
Sight. Sound. The ability to move oneself around across the world through a conscious will, and the ability to think complex thoughts. These were all things I had lost, and all at once… they returned to me. The blue of the sky was captured by my retinas. The sound of wind ran throughout my auditory canals. Boundless activity ran throughout my synapses. And as I reflexively twitched my fingers, my body responded with no hesitation.
“What?” A voice ran through my head as I opened my mouth.
I realized I was laying on a sandy dune, rather than standing upright as I had been for so long, and through reflex and impulse, I pushed myself off the ground, struggling to do so. My body felt fatigued, light, and lacked the strength I was accustomed to. However, I could move it, which in itself was an almost unbelievable accomplishment for me after I had spent so long in a static pose. Once I was up, standing on two legs, I looked down at myself. I had no idea what I would look like at this time, and I hoped, either through foolish optimism or simple routine, to see my body, the same as it always was. But what I saw was… inhuman.
Green was the first thing I recognized. The same green as the cactus I harvested what felt like an eternity ago. …And the second thing I recognized was tits.
“The fuck!?” I shouted, a honeyed girlish voice erupting from my mouth.
Never in my life had I wanted a mirror more, but as I brought my eyes away from my person and looked over my surroundings, all I saw was sand, more sand, and a 4-meter tall cactus that looked to be pried open by something. Recognizing the only thing of note within this square kilometer, I ran towards it, hoping for answers… which I found in a matter of seconds.
This was… me. This was the cactus I transformed into all that time ago, and as I looked at the opening, I began to theorize what the hell was happening. I could fit myself, my new… body into this husk of a cactus with ease. Was I, perhaps, born from this cactus? I wanted answers, but as I began to recall my past, as I grew used to using higher brain functions once more, I realized the futility of asking hows and whys to something I lacked the capacity to understand without… anything to base a theory on.
“Okay,” I thought to myself, “I ate a cactus, became a cactus, grew as a cactus, because I sure as hell wasn’t 4-meters tall before all this happened, and then from that cactus, I came out as a… cactus woman?”
“…Shit, maybe I should have jumped in on that mass suicide I saw in Kapfenberg,” I said to myself, still taken aback by the voice that escaped my lips
After getting over the initial shock of the bountiful excess of retarded bullshit that had been shoved into by the cruel taskmistress known as fate, I began to stop and examine my anthropomorphic cactus body.
I guess my biggest takeaway from the examination was just how… humanoid this body was. Despite bearing a greenish tint, a smooth outer surface, and a lack of true bones if my pale green teeth were any indication, the general shape and outline of my person were unmistakably that of a human woman. Five fingers on each hand, two arms, two legs, two eyes, a humanoid head. The essentials were there, though my form was also notably inhuman in other ways.
While I could smell, my body lacked any true nose, and it was as if I could smell with the entirety of my body. While I could hear, I lacked any ears, and instead had a pair of holes at the side of my head to pick up noise. While I had breasts and both shapely hips and a prominent bottom, none of them had any of the expected secondary features, lacking any holes for things to get into and get out of me, or nipples.
My fingers lacked any fingernail and were instead affixed with something that was not so much a spine as it was a claw. A fairly dull claw that could not scratch my own skin, or I guess it would be epidermis, and something similar adorned my elbows, knees, and feet… which were incidentally the most different part of me. My legs lacked any true foot and instead ended in these flat hoof-like stubs with front-facing toe-like claws.
The final change I noticed in my body was the introduction of a large flower that protruded from the off-center of my head and coated roughly half of my otherwise bald head. While I could not see the color given its position, its dainty soft texture and aroma were pleasant to the touch. It, weirdly enough, went to reassure me that things were alright and the more I thought about it… they were.
I was still alive. My heart may no longer beat. I may no longer bleed red. I may not have any proper organs. And I may technically be a living walking talking vegetable, but I was alive, damn it! I had a future! And while the world before me looked as desolate and unchanged as it did when I first transformed, that meant a lot.
As I looked out to the hazy horizon, I adopted a smirk and shouted to no one but myself.
“You hear that world! You fucked me, but I lived! You took my home! You took my family! You took my body! And you took my fucking 20-centimeter cock! But I’m still here, and I will make it to the goldarn Ocean, human or… whatever the fuck I’m supposed to be now!”
With that affirmation declared, I put one foot in front of the other and began to trek onwards towards the desert… only to stumble on my newfound limbs and fall face-first down a sandy hill. I laughed as I dusted myself off.
“Whoo boy. This is going to take some getting used to.”
Date: Three days since Carnegiea Sapiens Re;Birth
Location: Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany
The boundless expanse before me had finally given way to something other than barely recognizable ruins and endless dunes. Water. The ocean. A destination I set… what may as well have been a lifetime ago, was finally within my reach, and I moved towards it as fast as I could manage. Previously, that would have involved me dashing relentlessly through the sand, kicking up dirt, and trying to find a firm enough foundation to avoid tumbling down. But now, I was planting my feet down against the sand and skating across the desert with the greatest of ease, and a speed that would exceed that of even a marathon runner. All I had to do was plant my feet— or rather the bottoms of my legs— against the sand and I could propel myself uphill, downhill, and across flat terrain.
It was a marvelous perk of my new body, but far from the only one. The radiant sun and empty sky used to drain me and fill me with exhaustion, but now I found the rays to be rejuvenating, filling my body with energy and life that I sorely missed come nightfall, even if the glimmer of the moon had a similar, if less pronounced, effect. My form desired no sustenance other than what I took in from the sun, I felt I could go days without so much as a drop of water, and I never felt the need to rest during any part of my journey here.
I skid to a stop as I came within a few meters of the ocean and looked out to it wistfully… only to then realize that there was nothing there. The blue stretched on as flatly and endlessly as the cream-colored land that I came from. There were no boats, no settlements built around this land, and no signs that humanity had been here… ever. I thought back on my original plan, the hope I put into coming here, and imagined the despair I would have felt if I saw this back when I was Zedaki. Back when I was human. I would have likely drunk seawater out of frustration, perished, and left a corpse that would have either been consumed by the desert or devoured by the ocean.
“Huh. I guess it really was for the best that I ate that cactus. Who’da thunk it?”
I snickered as I heard my voice bounce throughout my head. While it was jarring to have my words come out like this at first, it was yet another aspect of my new body and was something else that, through endless hours of verbalizing to myself, I had come to appreciate. I missed talking. I missed being able to think without constantly worrying about my own survival. It was refreshing to spend three days doing just that, finding the upside of my transformation, and not struggling to survive. It was nice to get away from the maelstrom of sorrow my life had devolved into, but now… what was there for me to do? I achieved my goal, and at the end of the road, what lied in wait for me? Nothing.
I sat myself down as I stared into the vast blue yonder before me, taking a moment to embrace the calm sound of ocean waves as I meditated over things. The world was in tatters last I checked, I was now some weird plant person, and everything I knew and loved is all gone. What is a person when they are robbed of everything? What am I? Am I just a creature clawing for survival, or can I be something more? Are there more people like me scattered across Afro-Eurasia? Does my status make me special? Was I chosen by some entity in this world to do something grand?
I hemmed and hawed until my mind grew tired from the hypotheticals I threw its way, thinking about a lot of things, before coming to an answer. I began this contemplation when the sun was high, and now it was settling into the horizon. I stood up and looked at it as I made my declaration.
“The world is a vast unknown, and I will only know what it holds if I go out and explore it myself. If I head west and follow the coast, I will assuredly find someone or something. And that is what I’ll do.”
I clenched my fists as I looked down into the sand and lowered my body into it, with only the flower adorning the top of my head sticking out. I swam through the sand in this state, jetting and leaving a trail of dust behind me before leaping upwards and flying three meters high into the sky. I spun several times before sticking the landing on the sandy ground beneath me and skated towards my loosely established destination. I raced the sun while I still could, and kept running as night enveloped the land, knowing that somehow, someday, someway, I would find something.
Das Ende
Afterword
I mentioned in Natalie Rambles About Sex and the Sexual that I have something of a fondness for bizarre and hyper-specific fetish art, because. I enjoy seeing how wacky and wild concepts for erotic imagery can be to some people… such as boys turning into sexy cactus ladies.
I was first informed of this phenomenon from episode 278 of The Comedy Button, a podcast about a group of friends growing up, hanging out, and trying to maintain a happy outlook on life in these modern times. In that episode, recurring guest Jack DeVries referenced Shinji Ikari Cactified by cgaegavga99, a multi-page comic about the protagonist of Neon Genesis Evangelion being turned into a cactus woman and raped by a cactus man. This stuck with me as a crazy idea, and after I stumbled across That Prickly Feeling (TF/TG) by undercoversam, another comic about a man turning into a cactus woman, I decided that I simply needed to contribute to this burgeoning fetish with my own take.
I came up with the tentative title of “That Time I Was Transformed Into a Cactus Waifu” then and there, but I did not actually pursue the idea further for about a year, as there were more pressing subjects for me to write short stories about. Like a 52-year-old woman growing a penis and raping the Asian boy intern at their company office party. When it came time to imagine a story around this title, my brain generated an image of a cloak-wearing desert dweller finding a cactus and drinking the cactus juice to quench his thirst, unknowingly sealing his fate of becoming an anthropomorphic cactus woman.
From this initial concept, my mind threw a wide assortment of derivative ideas together over the span of about 2 minutes before I developed the core idea of the story. The desertification plot point from the 2011 Nintendo DS RPG Radiant Historia. The desolated Eurasia of Muv-Luv Alternative. And the original old man version of Zedaki, a character from my 2018 novel, Psycho Bullet Festival: The Odyssey of Abigale Quinlan.
This resulted in a story about a man wandering through the desertified remains of a desolate Europe, finding a cactus, eating its fruits, and slowly becoming a cactus girl. With some political background flavor-text based on modern going-ons.
Now then, do I think this story is particularly good? For the most part, yes, I like what I did here. A flavorful introduction that eases into backstory followed by a staggered approach to the transformation that any reader would anticipate, a change of expectations by turning the protagonist into a cactus for a while in a bout of dehumanizing existentialism, before concluding things by presented a transformed protagonist who sets off to continue their adventure before jumping ahead in time to truly conclude the story.
Well, I say conclude, but I do have every intention of revisiting this story with a potential sequel, but I should not talk about projects before they are developed, so I’ll just close things off right… now.
Continue this now. And if you have, please tell me where!
I have every intention of continuing this story, but I am currently busy tackling other projects. I’m glad that you enjoyed it!