I was a cactus living in a desert at the time. It was a dry, dramatic, tumultuous landscape, drought for over twenty or thirty ought years or so, I reckon. I had got used to it, though, comfortable in that barren environment. I hadn’t seen a cloud since I was just a kid cactus. When I was a kid cactus, no reckoning how many years ago, there was a tremendous thunderstorm over our desert land, and many of my dear friends nearly died. My best friend, Cactim, died that day. Drowned. I think him about him to this day.
So, you can reckon my apprehension that day when, as I was looking up at the sky, admiring the sun, I saw a faint wisp of cotton over the horizon, faintly outlining the curve of the earth. At first, I didn’t think much of it. I would see wisps all the time, I suppose, and none of them had really scurred me. In the past twenty ought years or so by then I had seen at least five wisps, and they didn’t much scare me. Anything larger than a wisp, though, and I would get a bit nervous, and as the day went along, this wisp got larger and larger.
Soon, the wisp was a cloud, and it was looming right over me. I shuttered a bit, still shutter to this day just thinking about it. I couldn’t bear to think about what it might want or do to me. I cowered, my spikes trying to cover me from the inevitable downpour. My green skin shaking at the thought of a wet raindrop.
Instead, the rain cloud said “Hello.” I lowered my arms and said “Howdy. What’s up? What is the weather like up there?” and she said “I’m just passing by, on my way to whereabouts and whatnot, and what about you?” and I said “Nothing, just moseying along down here. Where’d’ya say you was you off to?” and she said, “I going down to this place, Vegas. Reckon you heard of it?” and I said “Oh, yeah, sure, I reckon I heard about of it. D’ya need the comp’ny?” and she said, “Sure thing stranger, if you don’t mind the ride.”
So we took it down the interstate, racing to sin. It seemed like a perfect fit for the two of us. Vegas, there in the desert, a climate that I am settled in, and she would feel right at home among the fountains, spitting their streams into the sky, and all the lights, lights, lights.
When we rolled into town, though, we got nothing but cold shoulders. Everybody looked suspiciously up at her, and they kept a safe distance from me. The town just wasn’t too friendly, despite the warm glow of the neon lights and the ring of the slot machines. We didn’t need much attention, though, or too much company of others. We strolled down the strip, talking up a storm, if you don’t mind the pun, taking notes of the sidewalks and the streets and the different colored buildings and the billboards, like something we’ve never seen before. We got to know each other, and began to feel more comfortable around each other. My shyness about her began to ease off, and slowly I began to reckon that she wasn’t intending to kill me no more.
As we strolled around, I picked up some hard liquor, something to whet the whistle. Some innocent thing, some 151 rum, and we began to take shots, me considerably more than her. At about the fourth or fifth shot, as the first began to kick in, I edged closer and closer to her until our shoulders were near touching. When we were close enough to feel the heat of our skin, I put my prickly arm around her. She didn’t mind the spikes, being a cloud and all. She was rightly unaffected by my prickiness.
We moved along and along and along, and it began to grow late. We decided to catch a bus back to our place, a ramshackle hotel at the end of the strip. When the bus pulled up, though, the driver wouldn’t let me on. First, he said, because I was too drunk, and second, he said, because I was a cactus, and they don’t give too much mind to cacti on a bus, especially those reeking of booze. He even went so far as to get off of his bus, walk over to the one behind him, and tell him that I was drunk and a cactus, and not to let me on. So, I pulled myself away. I didn’t know how we were going to get back as I was beginning to lurch inevitably into unconsciousness.
That’s when she began to wind and wind and wind. She began to blow and wind and the fussing wind lifted me up into her arms and she began to carry my limp body down the strip, back to the hotel. She did it with ease, wrapping her wispy arms around my body, carrying me along. She didn’t tire, and everything moved away from her path, running about in a frenzy, trying to find cover from her storming. With her wind came some rain, and then a thunderstorm, moving down the strip, just carrying a cactus.
Something happened to my inebriated body, wrapped in her water-molecule arms. I am not sure to this day, since I passed out halfway down the strip. I woke lying next to her in the hotel bed. Something was different. Something about my skin. It didn’t hit me at first, but after a moment of contemplation, I realized that I was naked. I had taken off all of my spikes before I had got into bed, and my skin was damp from her skin, her dense condensation. At first I had panicked, remembering what had happened to my good friend, those many years ago. I shouted and hollered and fussed and she woke up, calmly and calmed me down with “Shh, shh, you’re okay, there is nothing to worry about,” and I said “What in dagnab tarnation?”
She told me that while she carried me home, her water-molecule arms began to transform me bit by bit as she walked block by block. The molecules began to permeate my skin, and slowly they began to transform me. By the time we reached our room, my body was completely different, and it was quite possible that I was no longer a cactus, and that I might never be a cactus neither again.
I felt fine, physically, and could cope with the idea of being forever without spikes. Perhaps now people wouldn’t shirk so much away from me. We held each other, and made love, and lightning struck, a pathetic fallacy of sorts, I realize, but this is no matter. When you make love to a cloud, you have to allow these things to happen.
So, we drove back, down the opposite way of I-15, back towards the desert of my home, back to the ocean of hers. She dropped me off with a wink and a smile, and I waved as she sped away, over the curvature of the earth in direction she came, disappearing over the horizon. I admit, I am a tough guy, and hadn’t shed a tear for nothing, not even for Cactim when he died, but that day, when she left I felt a bit lonsome and had to choke back a couple drops of something from my eyes. I wandered around feeling as though I didn’t belong among them red sands, that dry air, or anywhere thereabouts. So I kept on wandering, and wandering. I wandered into the mountains, and into the towns in and over, and through the valleys, and all around and around. I reckon I was looking for somewheres I could settle in and be comfortable. I wandered and wandered until finally I made it to the ocean, and remembered she was from thereabouts. I looked all abouts for her, my beautiful cloud, but could not find her. I decided to stay put right there until I saw her.
In the meantime, I got used to the new climate. The people were much friendlier than before, and were eager to approach me, and some seemed almost too enthusiastic about the whole deal to the point of being downright suspicious. I decided to get a place of my own, and I found one, right on the shore. It was bit small and a bit cramped, but with plenty of windows to look out of to watch for her, and cozy otherwise.
Maybe, I reckon, I’ll never know what has happened to her, somewhere out there in the horizon. And, too, I might never really know what had happened to me that day, in Vegas, when she carried me back to the hotel. I reckon I will never fully understand all the voodoo and science and specifics of it all. But I know that I was different from that day on. I know because one after noon, while I was moseying about my room, I needed to use the restroom for some private matters. As I walked through the doorway and steeped onto the tile, I noticed a movement to the left of me. When I looked to examine what it was, I realized after a few moments that it was nothing but a mirror, and I had just noticed myself in the mirror. And then, I looked a little closer, because I couldn’t believe my own eyes as I was looking into that mirror, I couldn’t believe what was looking back at me. It was a cranberry bush.
