The Problem of the Haunted Blue Cactus

Nana's house was empty. The process took days to get to this point and only the attic remained. A new family would be moving in tomorrow.

Boxes of memories littered the paved front yard, waiting to be loaded. Full of photos, collectibles, candles and jars of unidentifiable, but likely useful herbs, the crates were all that was left of that ornery, old woman. With a pang in her heart and sweat on her brow, Emily started up the dilapidated, wooden stairs. The aroma of decay seemed nostalgic. The house was renovated many times, but no one besides Nana, or her granddaughter, would be allowed in this sacred space.

The dark room smelled like mothballs and dust. Light filtered in unevenly through the one window, on which sat a sapphire hued oddity, beautiful enough to elicit a gasp from the young woman. A cactus, deep blue, like a crown jewel.

The vibrant succulent, while gorgeous, wasn't surprising. Her grandmother's prasinophobia, a fear of the color green, led her to find or create many plants with bizarre features.

What caught her attention was the pot it sat in. Handmade, the pearly white container was decorated with elegant slate depictions of landscapes. Delicately painted symbols from the old woman's casting books hid between the leaves, rivers and rocks. Nana hadn't created this. Emily had. She'd thought she lost the planter when she moved away. Why keep it hidden up here? Did Nana use it to focus the spell that turned the cactus blue?

Regardless, it was coming home with Emily.

Back at the apartment, after Ben, her roommate, and the succulent were introduced, they placed it on the window sill, where it sat, emitting a strange scent, fruity and too sweet. The soil stayed bone dry, no matter how often she watered it. The liquid would soak into dirt immediately and the plant vibrated, almost imperceptibly.

Over time, the smell ripened. They gagged on the peculiar stench, floral and rotting. One couldn't get used to the odor, and eating was a chore if done in the house. Most days, they'd taken to dining on the balcony, but lately the stink began following them there as well, and snaked its way into their clothing, their hair and even their skin. The insidious fragrance tied itself to their flesh in a way that soap could never relieve.

Emily began to find wine-colored petals. She nearly choked on one that found its way into her coffee. Despite feverish swallowing, the blockage persisted, stuck in her throat. Ben tried the Heimlich to no avail. As the world grew hazy and her vision became dotted with blackness, he held her jaw, forcing her mouth open with one band-aid coated hand, and pulled the thing out with his fingers.

Ben was tense all the time, his body a coiled snake. While Emily found flower parts, slime hunted him and ran viscously down his bathroom walls. Blue needles were obscured malevolently in his underclothes. His body was adorned with bandages.

For his sake, she came up with a plan. Nana never experienced these phenomena. For ages, she lived peacefully with the desert growth. The old house never attacked its previous occupant with spikes, odors or blossoms. Her grandmother never complained of mucous lining her shower. It needed to go back.

Lurking in the shadows, the young woman waited until all the lights in the house were off, and long enough after to be sure the new owners fell asleep. Her heart pounded against her rib cage as she checked beneath the yellow frog near the back door. Her fingers grazed something hard and cold in the gravel. Grabbing the key, and the bag, containing "the package", as labeled by Ben in the planning stages, she gingerly walked towards the backdoor.

She creeped into the kitchen, anxious at the soft sound her feet made on the tile. She let out a long-held breath when she determined the room lay empty. The staircase's decomposing steps, typically creaking when walked upon, stood silent as she made her way to the topmost part of the house. Emily placed the cactus on the window ledge. It appeared quiet. Still. Alive only in the way that plants were and no more. Emily smiled and whispered, "I'm sorry I took you from your home."

As she unlocked the door to her apartment, Emily felt lighter. Her shoulders relaxed, her gut was empty and ravenous in the most satisfying way. She was running through the contents of the fridge in her head when she found Ben on the white carpet, in a puddle of his own blood.

He was slouched against the couch, covered in tiny, leaking holes, like a grotesque sculpture made of swiss cheese. Spines protruded from his cheeks, lips and forehead. One eyelid hung partly closed, impaled sideways, the skin folded like cloth. Every time Ben blinked, the spike rubbed across his partially exposed eyeball. Emily stood there stupidly, just staring, and he stared back at her, looking adrift. Like a man drugged into oblivion. Finally, he spoke, the words came out in a slur, accompanied by a river of drool, but clear enough that Emily understood.

"The Plan has failed."