The spine of the critic (Monthly tale - 26) X

(Woman into cactus)*

The car was all black and was quite long, it looked expensive, and that’s because it was. The vehicle easily travelled along the rising street until it reached the museum entrance in the early noon.

It stopped, the driver’s door opened and a long leg wrapped in nylon and with an expensive  heel on its foot appeared.

Geraldine Giselle followed the leg, because it was hers.

She was a tall woman, wearing a long trench coat and big shades, she had pale skin, was very thin, but not very well-endowed, her hair was cut short and dyed white.

It made you think of one of those exaggerated, stylized drawings that fashion designers create. She exuded glamour and demanded respect.

The most renowned critic in the profession, you were nobody if GeGi hadn’t reviewed your art.

Geraldine stood and looked up, she slid her glasses down over her long sharp nose and her cold gray eyes narrowed, her lips, painted black, twitched into a grin.

Above the museum entrance was a banner with a black and white picture of Donny’s face.

A remarkably wide and equally fat man who didn’t have much hair or beard.

GeGi’s arch-nemesis.

Donnathelo Novack, impressionist artist, performance poet, experimental author, he began his career as a comic book inker but quickly jumped to more bold artsy pursuits.

Donny and Geraldine had met at his first exhibition and had instantly hated each other.

For Donny the critic was a posh and vapid woman whose interests were equal to those of a house plant, to GeGi the artist was an egocentric showman with nothing to say.

Inevitably, the intellectual war between these two bright minds extended on for thirty long and excruciating years during which they had even had heated things up during discussions on live TV.

And now Donny was dead.

A heart attack had put him down when he was sharing a Jacuzzi with two young women and one young man.

In Geraldine’s opinion it was an end that fit him perfectly.

The critic hadn’t come to this last post-mortem exhibition just to critically spit one final time at the artist, but because she had been invited, specifically her being invited was one of Donny’s last requests.

Which was deeply annoying.

She had parked in a spot reserved for disabled people, but she didn’t care, it was going to be quick. Like a storm she marched firmly and securely to the entrance and opened the double doors with a push.

Geraldine didn’t know that the exhibition was being held in the main entrance hall, but it couldn’t have fitted her dramatic entrance any better.

The attendees instantly looked back and recognized the famous critic, a wave of whispers and chattering filled over the large room.

GeGi smirked, there weren’t many things that she enjoyed more than being preceded by her reputation. She didn’t take off her glasses, but she opened her coat and let it slide down her shoulders, under it she was wearing a very loose blouse and tight black leather pants.

Her hand quickly acquired a glass of champagne from a waiter’s tray and she walked towards the thing that had made this whole herd of rich people put on their best clothes and head to the museum.

It wasn’t hard to find the thing, Donny’s last piece was in a round stand in the middle of the gallery, hidden beneath a white blanket.

Whatever it was it wasn’t very big but was quite cylindrical.

“A pot...?” wondered Geraldine taking a sip from her glass, in her opinion it wouldn’t have been weird for Donny to make his last piece something as stupid as that.

“Miss Giselle! So glad you could come!”

Giselle looked to the left and saw Ellen walking towards her with a wide smile.

Ellen was Donny’s lawyer, one of many, Giselle had dealt with a couple of them over the years, this one was the one in charge of his last will. A young woman with brunette hair tied back in a bun and wearing big glasses, she was wearing a business skirt suit. She always seemed to be carrying around a heavy folder full of papers.

“I thought you wouldn’t, well, make it...?” The nervous lawyer offered a hand to the critic.

The critic didn’t move or flinch, her cold eyes were clearly judging the lawyer’s fashion sense. She took a sip from her glass.

“Let’s finish this quickly,” growled GeGi in reply. “I want to be home for eight.”

Ellen couldn’t do much but comply, under the freezing glance of the critic, she lowered her hand and nodded.

“Yes, yes, sure, just let me get ready.”

Geraldine just stood and stared as Ellen walked to the front of the exhibit, with her folder against  her chest, she cleared her throat trying to attract the audience’s attention.

She failed.

The critic rolled her eyes in annoyance.

“Hello... Please...?” mumbled Ellen. “HELLO!” The sudden increase of volume in her soft voice finally made the chatter fade and the crowd pay attention to her, she was clearly not ready for that. “Uh... Uhhh...!” After blushing and looking down she managed to start talking. “HELLO!” she repeated. “Welcome to this, lovely evening... We are gathered here to celebrate the death of Donnathelo Novack...!”

She froze as she realised what she had said, even GeGi laughed.

“No! No! I didn’t mean...!” the poor lawyer could barely hold it together.

This reached the limit of Geraldine’s tolerance for annoyance, she finished her champagne, left the glass in a random bystander’s hand and took a step forward, taking the stage.

“We are here to both take a first look and say our last goodbyes to the work and craft of our dear Donny,” she easily explained to the audience. “And he’s not around because he’s found the ultimate excuse to not have to move his fat ass.”

People laughed, but with GeGi, not at her.

Ellen leaned towards the critic.

“Thank you...” she whispered.

“Just hurry up and finish this.” answered Geraldine, without looking at her.

The lawyer nodded and moved nearer to the stand, Geraldine made the presentation.

“And now, we reveal, luckily for us, Donny’s last work... What is this thing even called?”

Ellen grabbed the sheet covering it with one hand, she nodded for no reason and looked at the crowd.

“I present to you: SPINELESS!”

The sheet flew.

There was a chorus of “Oh”’s, then silence, followed by some confused claps.

It was just a brown flower pot, the cheap kind you would find at any regular garden store, filled with dark fertile soil, but with no plant in it.

Giselle froze, staring at the flowerpot, uttering the same”Oh” as everyone else, her lips slightly open... as if she were in a trance... she shook her head, returning to reality.

“That’s not a surprise at all... Am I right?” she asked the audience, not managing to make anybody laugh.

“Donny wanted to have his longtime ... companion, GeGi, I’m sure you all know her... He wanted her to give the first review of his last piece and... well, she’s here, so, uh, please...?”

Ellen didn’t need to have said that to the critic at all, Giselle was incredibly upset at the lawyer, but after frowning for a while she rolled her eyes once again, crossed her arms and looked at the flower pot.

This time, she managed to stop herself from becoming lost in that weird feeling.

Almost..

“OK, sure,” she said. “I’ll do this and then I’m gone... So...” she blinked, the round hard ceramic, with no marks, no anything... just a flowerpot without anything inside... “It’s obvious this is yet another of his impressionistic stunts, trying to squeeze something from random crap - as if anything could truly be art, as if everything has meaning,” she wasn’t going to be soft to a dead man. “Of course, it’s not the flowerpot, but the act, the performance, he wanted to have me here and he hated my guts as much as I hated his. Spineless. Pretty obviously, the flowerpot is me, or critics, but probably me, a hollow thing filled with fertile soil in which nothing can grow. Yes, very amusing Donny, you certainly won this last one.”

She talked dryly and quickly and everybody paid attention without saying a word.

Ellen began to clap when she finished and soon everybody else clapped too.

GeGi stared at the flowerpot for a while, there was... something else... but she just shrugged, spun on her heels and began to walk away.

“Wait, Giselle...” gasped Ellen.

“No waits, little girl, my job here is done and I don’t want to have to think about Donny or his shitty art ever again in my life.” she spoke loudly as she swiftly moved through the crowd. “Good luck with your lame party! I hope you aren’t as bad at law as you are at presenting art!”

The critic left the museum before Ellen could stop her.

She was very annoyed and upset about the whole ordeal.

“Spineless...” GeGi spat at the floor. “Fuck you, Donny, I’m alive, I won, you are feeding the worms” she grunted with spite at herself.

The quicker she got back home the better, she was sure of  that, she just wanted to drink something and sneak into bed... and...

That odd, odd feeling...

Before getting into her car GeGi did something very unlike her public fashionable and glamorous personal.

The woman spread her legs wide and rubbed her crotch with one hand, closing her eyes, moaning softly towards the sky.

“Why am I so horny?” she asked, then smirked. “Ah, yes, of course, because the pig is dead!”

But she wasn’t certain that explained why hard her nipples were so damned hard. Yet she climbed into her car and quickly drove off, not wanting to ever again enter that museum.

Or see that stupid flowerpot.

...

Febrile moans resounded inside the walls of the big avantgarde house at the top of another hill on the rich side of the city.

A spacious little mansion, filled with art in every corner, art that would make anybody stop and stare, art that expresses, that was bold and uncanny.

You could follow the trail of clothes from the entrance hall to the main bedroom, GeGi’s coat, her shoes, sweaty footsteps on the parquet, her pants, her blouse, her underwear.

The enormous bed that was just one very lonely woman.

Gasps, heat, the rubbing of skin on top of the sheets.

The only illumination in the room was the blueish light coming from the pool outside the big windows behind the bed.

A moist silhouette on the sheets.

Geraldine was on top, completely nude, her thin bony body was like a painting on that canvas of lewdness. The critic was half-awake, half-sleep, her hands moving around her body with free will.

Fingers making the stiff nipples that topped her tiny tits quiver, the lips of her shaved vagina leaking with need.

She was dreaming a nightmare...

GeGi was still a critic there, in the darkness, still horny, but she wasn’t masturbating in that dream world. Just standing annoyed.

Laughter and giggles attracted her attention.

The naked critic looked back and saw the naked artist.

A hot tub, a Jacuzzi, bubbling warmly, Donny in the middle, kissing the lips of a young faceless man, his hand pumping the young penis.

His other arm was holding a faceless redhead that sucked his neck while a faceless blonde sucked his cock.

Geraldine wasn’t impressed by the lewdness of the scene, she crossed her arms and smirked.

“That’s all you are, you stupid SOW!”

That word echoed around the darkness a hundred times, Geraldine was surprised by her own voice... and so was Donny in the hot tub...

His eyes opened wide, he stopped kissing, splashing water - he squealed.

The artist was left by his faceless fantasies, trapped in that Jacuzzi he struggled and Geraldine watched in total amazement.

Donny’s flesh changed and deformed, teats grew, tusks, a round nose, floppy bat-wing ears... he became a sow...

Geraldine laughed hard, grabbing her sides as she saw how below the curly tail his sex was reshaped into a porcine cunt as the poor creature tried to escape the bubbly waters.

“That’s all you are! That’s all you are!” she shouted, gloating at the sow’s misery.

All sound was sucked away, her feet slid into the shadows and she was brought in front of another scene as the squealing grunts became a faint distant echo.

She still had tears of laughter in her eyes as she stopped grabbing her sides, confused, surprised, she frowned.

“That...?”

A white stand.

And on top of the stand that flowerpot.

“Fuck off...” mumbled the critic, rubbing one of her arms.

Her lips twitched, she only took one naked step forward and then she was firmly planted in front of the stand.

And in front of that damned flowerpot.

“Cheap... Unsubstantial... Meaningless...”

Geraldine wasn’t sure who she was talking to, but dreams aren’t supposed to make sense.

Neither are nightmares.

That temptingly fertile soil.

She raised a hand... slowly she sank her fingers into the soil... it was so soft... so welcoming, so easy to penetrate... a dumb smile was drawn onto her face...

It lasted until she tried to pull her fingers out and the soil didn’t let her go.

The more she pulled, the more she seemed to sink, her whole hand, the wrist. She grabbed her arm.

“No! No! Stop!”

Pulling only made it worse, grabbing her arm made her lose her other hand to the soil.

In despair the woman put both of her naked feet on the stand and pulled with her entire body. The soil kept sucking her, both of her arms, somehow her left leg and the knee of the other.

“Don’t swallow me! Don’t swallow me!”

Her body, the body of the renowned and dignified critic GeGi, was being squeezed and contorted, forced, impossibly, to fit into that small cheap flower pot.

She cried, she cursed, her limbs entirely in, her perky butt so exposed, the lips of her vagina.

Geraldine tried to stretch her neck out causing her chin to touch the soil, her face sank into that darkness.

“I am noooooooooooooooothiiiiiiiiiiiiing!” she yelled for some reason before her voice became muffled by the dirt.

Now there was something filling the flowerpot.

Her exposed rear was left out, her vagina shivering, in an impossible act of contortion her small breasts and nipples were also peeking from the soil.

Darkness was everything, her life squeezed into that small space.

Only one way to feel the world.

No voice to speak.

Or to scream.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

GeGi pulled herself up out of the nightmare with her thunderous yell.

She heard dogs barking at her voice in the distance.

Panting breathlessly down to the tip of her nose, she sat on the bed, trying not to think about that horrific vision that she had seen but also felt in her body.

Such degrading humiliation.

Not to think that it was a fantastic piece.

Blinking she looked down, her long legs were spread and two fingers were still inside her pussy. They were continuously fondling the tender inner walls of her twat.

“What... was... The pot...” she mumbled, leaning back, rubbing her pussy even more, going deeper. “The... The pot...” her voice was a trembling shivering mess.

She bit her lips.

The pot, the pot was an eternal image burned into her mind.

The flowerpot that was going to be filled with her flesh.

She stopped, well, she tried to, but her fingers kept rubbing her cunt.

“Nononononono...”

Shaking her head did nothing, and neither did gasping, moaning, cursing and yelling.

Geraldine kept masturbating, her eyes wide open as she felt something build up in her body.

Something that made her groan.

“Aaahnnnnng!”

Bending forward she spread her legs wider, her pussy, something was wrong with her pussy on top of it being unnaturally horny.

Grunting and shouting, that was all she could do as she saw her clit twisting and shifting, she moved her trembling hand away, knowing she wasn’t going to be able to hold it away for long, no matter what terrible thing happened to her vagina.

Her clitoris stretched and grew, almost like one of those videos of plants growing in fast-forward. She couldn’t close her eyes, she couldn’t look away.

“NONONONONONONONONONONONONO...!”

A punch to her belly, a panting plea, the overgrown clitoris slowly and gently began to open.

To blossom.

Petals of flesh formed from the muscle and the skin, petals that were quickly painted a vivid pink, petals that changed from human flesh to plant flesh.

As the flower made from her cunt blossomed, from the centre of the petals the essential elements of such an organ quickly sprouted and elongated: A pollen tube, style, stigma, anther, filament...

Words that she didn’t know or care about.

Her ovaries hurt as they shrank, but she was too busy screaming.

“MY CUNT...! MY CUNT...! MY CUNT IS A FLOWER!”

It was indeed true, there was a flower in GeGi’s cunt, a big beautiful multi petalled bright pink flower with a brush of yellow in the centre.

A fully functional flower attached to her vagina and ovaries that was already ready for pollination.

Geraldine covered her mouth, put her hands on top of her head, bit her lips again. Pulling a single finger out she moved her trembling hand towards the flower and very gently, while feeling very scared just slightly poked the tip of one of the tendrils.

Her eyes blanked, instantly the pussy beneath the flower came over the wet sheets, stronger than Geraldine had ever cum in her entire life.

She slid down the bed, her mind blasted by the earth shaking orgasms for a while.

It took her awhile before she was able to speak again, laying stiffly with her legs spread, terrified at the idea of closing them and crushing her vaginal flower.

“I’m never going to wear pants again...” she whispered, gaunt looking, pale and sweaty, staring at the ceiling of her room as she realized another more serious concern. “I am going to end up buried in a fucking five dollar flowerpot!” she groaned, she cursed. “Donny! DONNY YOU FUCKING SON OF AAAAAAAAAAARGGGGGGGGGGGGGH!”

The pinches of pain began.

Pinches that started concentrated in her flowered crotch.

Groans of pain and curses of rage.

“What now?! What fucking now?!”

Geraldine rose up, tormented by those hundreds of small pinches erupting in her vagina hidden behind the pink petals. It would have been almost painless if they had happened one by one, but they happened in dozens of rows.

But, being extremely careful, she moved the flower slightly to the side, trying to not touch the inner parts... but even vaguely rubbing the petals sent waves of mind-blowing pleasure through her..

Biting her entire lower lip she saw what was going on.

Spines.

Spines for the spineless.

The skin around her vagina had become rough and green and at the same time very tiny, very pointy spines were sprouting from her shifted skin.

It was obvious she was becoming some sort of plant, but as she witnessed her cunt being almost solidified into that healthy green crust, feeling every single one of those spines sprout... it was also obvious...

She was becoming a cactus.

“You son of a bitch... AUCH!”

Spine after spine grew out around her cunt, slowly reaching beyond the shadow of her clitoral flower. The pot flashing through her mind with each single pinch.

The pot...

“Of course...” she mumbled in between the multiple horrors that were happening to her existence. “The pot... the damn pot... I have to destroy that thing!”

It seemed like a good plan, it made sense, if the pot was gone surely she couldn’t become something to fill it.

It was a notion that surely couldn’t be a trap at all... but there weren’t any other realistic options she could see to save her skin from the unrealistic ordeal she was suffering...

Dragging herself on her thin ass she reached the edge of the bed and got up.

“AGH! FUCK ME!”

The pinches came from her skin and poked her ass, her butthole just turned into cactus flesh and spines sprouted around it’s circumference causing pain to her buttocks.

“Fuck you, Donny, fuck you!” tears in her eyes.

She had to walk with her legs mockingly spread, the beautiful flower in her crotch. Every step a battle against her body and the spines.

A total humiliation.

Never had the great critic Geraldine Giselle looked more deranged or ungraceful, but perhaps she had an excuse, because she was slowly transforming into a cactus.

She didn’t even attempt to get dressed, not even to put on shoes, she only grabbed her trench coat as she dragged her feet to the exit.

“I will win...! I will win...!” she gasped. “I don’t give a fuck about you, you are the one obsessed with me, the one trying to do this total bullshit to my life... but I will the one standing at the end! I will win!”

Geraldine opened the door and left her house without closing it.

With an extreme effort she reached her car with most of her crotch area covered in green and spines. GeGi opened the door and sat in the seat.

“FUUUUUUUCK MEEEEEEE!”

The spines pierced both the back of her coat and the leather of the seat.

It wasn’t a pleasurable feeling.

Vision blurry with tears, she closed the car’s door with a slam, turned on the engine and without putting on her seatbelt stepped on the accelerator with her bare foot.

She only hit the fence that surrounded her humble mansion once before she reached the road, but she did break the headlights of a couple of her neighbour’s cars.

It might be unnecessary to say, but she really didn’t care at all.

But being deranged, even if it’s because you are slowly transforming into a plant, and driving just like a deranged person would has inevitable consequences.

“You have to be kidding me...!”

Blue and red flashing lights, a cop’s bike followed and caught her car, the cop waved his hand, clearly asking, or more correctly, ordering her to stop.

Geraldine considered not obeying, maybe even running over the bike with her car, but she still had enough brain left to realize that a cop could help her.

Or at the very least to stand as witness that she was once a woman.

She pulled the car over to the kerb, the cop stopped the bike behind her and walked to the window that she had already lowered.

It was a female cop, a busty Latin lady with curly dark hair, the name tag on her uniform badge was M. Mendez, she had her bike helmet under her arm and was pointing a flashlight.

“Ma’am, you think this is Grand Theft Auto? You were driving like a maniac!” Mendez’s assertive tone only held until she saw GeGi in the driving seat. “Wait? Are you naked? Why are you naked?”

Sweaty and shivering, the critic knew what kind of image she was presenting to the officer, she sighed, raised her hands from the wheel and tried to remain calm as her hard nipples peeked out from under her coat.

“Yes, I’m naked, that’s obvious. Look, officer, I don’t have much time to explain, but I need your help.”

“You seem to need help...”

“I am Geraldine Giselle, GeGi, a very famous art critic.”

Mendez shrugged.

“No idea.”

Geraldine groaned, she could feel her body changing as she wasted time.

“OK, it doesn’t matter! I’m... I’m transforming into a cactus.”

The cop was left with a blank expression.

“Sure...” she stretched out the syllables of the word.

“It’s true! A damned psycho artist who didn’t do anything good in his whole life made me review his last work after he died and it... did something to me, a curse or something...! He hated me! It’s his revenge!”

“Sure...” Repeated Mendez, still blank.

“It got into my mind and now my body is transforming! A flower grew from my damn clit! But it can be stopped! There’s a flowerpot in the museum! You have to help me to get to the museum and bash that damn thing before I finish changing!”

“The flowerpot?”

“The flowerpot, yes, it was his last work! I know it sounds crazy! I know I’m naked! Stop looking at me like that! I am a rich famous white woman! I pay taxes! There’s spines in my cunt! YOU HAVE TO HELP ME BEFORE I BECOME A FUCKING PLANT!

Officer Mendez had had enough.

“Ma’am, you are clearly under the influence of drugs. Please, calm down and get out of the car.”

“I am telling you the truth!” upset, angry and annoyed, GeGi climbed out of the car and opened her coat letting it drop to the floor, showing off her mutated body. “Look at me! LOOK WHAT THAT BASTARD DID TO MY FLESH!”

Mendez’s blankness ended.

“Putisima hostia...” the office muttered in her native tongue. “¡Tienes una flor en el coño! she yelled.

The flashlight examined GeGi’s thin body, her crotch was completely taken over by the cactus she was slowly turning into, the spines and the green crust replacing her skin were extending slowly but without a pause.

She almost didn’t feel the pinches anymore.

“Do you see it!”

“You have a flower in your twat!” Mendez repeated in English, unable to deny the mix between human and plant that her eyes were witnessing.

“I told you! You have to help meEEEEEEEEH!”

Geraldine’s knees bent slightly from the pain. She groaned and struggled to remain upright as her left nipple began to elongate in a similar way to how her clit had a few hours ago.

The nipple blossomed.

Another beautiful pink flower.

Green flesh and spines growing behind the petals.

Mendez’s flashlight and helmet dropped to the floor.

“¡Te estas transformando en un cactus!” yelled the officer in full panic mode. “You are transforming into a cactus!”

Spines started to pinch out of GeGi’s right breasts.

“Stop repeating everything I say and help me already, you idiot!”

The officer grabbed her forehead with both hands, eyes wide open looking at Geraldine’s slowly shifting flesh. That vagina-like opening made of cactus behind the flower in her crotch.

It was crazy, but the white rich bitch wasn’t lying.

She had often daydreamed about confronting the supernatural, but those sort of things you never expect to end up finding in your life. Even less so during a late night shift on a road in the middle of nowhere.

Mendez managed to keep her cool surprisingly well, thanks to being a cop.

“OK... OK!” she grabbed her helmet back. “If we break that pot-thing we save your skinny ass, no?”

“YES! That is what I was trying to tell you BEFORE MY NIPPLE TURNED INTO A FLOWER!”

The cop couldn’t deny that exclamation.

“Can you still drive?” she asked.

“Yes!”

“Then drive to the museum and I will escort you.”

“THANKS!”

GeGi quickly got back behind the steering wheel, Mendez nodded and got on her bike. Both women began to drive towards their objective.

The broken flashlight and Geraldine’s coat were left by the roadside.

As the critic drove the critic felt her spine growing stiff while her limbs began to feel loose, spines covering her back, she had to sit on the edge of the seat.

“Come on! Come on! Why is this road so damn long?!”

The first brushes of blue were appearing in the night sky as the sun began to rise above the distant horizon when the car and the bike began to climb the hill up to the museum.

Geraldine drove over the reserved for disabled people sign and stopped the car on the lawn in front of the museum, Mendez parked her bike just behind.

They made it barely in time.

The critic opened the drivers door with a kick.

“My body! My body! HELP ME!”

Mendez rushed to GeGi’s aid, despite knowing what was happening she was still surprised when she saw the state of GeGi’s body. She had a cactus shaped like a woman for a torso, with a flower on her left tit and in her crotch, her limbs were starting to become wrinkly for some reason.

“Puta vida...!” she offered her a hand to help her get out of the car, GeGi grabbed the whole arm. “Don’t worry, we are almost there OUCH! Those damned spines are real!”

“Careful! Careful!” shouted Geraldine hanging desperately from the officer’s shoulder. “Don’t smash my flowers!”

“I know, I know!”

Mendez began to drag the critic towards the museum's entrance, it was quite a difficult task because Geraldine could only barely move her limbs and her back was covered with spines.

“Why are you sure that if you break the pot you will change back...?” gasped the cop, feeling a bit dizzy from all her exertion.

“What? Because... It’s obvious, it’s the only way, if the flowerpot caused this then the flowerpot can end it...”

“So you... Don’t know...”

“I...” Geraldine had another realization before she agreed with Mendez’s reasoning. “Wait... Why are you dragging me? Just enter the museum and break that damn thing...!”

Something dropped to the floor.

Geraldine looked backwards, she saw Mendez’s empty shoes and her pants with that heavy cop equipment belt.

She looked down at her side, she was taller than the cop, but now she had to look down to see the officer’s eyes.

“Mendez...?” she asked.

Mendez’s eyes were slowly moving to the sides... she was changing, just like Geraldine, but into something very different.

“Oh, no, no please...!” sobbed GeGi.

“Creo que ge puesto un huevo en mis bragas...” mumbled the cop, confused and shocked as the world shrank around her.

“NOOOOOOOOO!”

Geraldine’s yell didn’t stop Mendez metamorphosis, the officer just collapsed inside her own shirt and the critic inevitably fell forward.

At the last second she stopped herself from landing on her face with her arms. She gasped and grunted, her arms trembled, so feeble, she couldn’t get up, so she resigned herself to lie on her back.

The spines didn’t make it easier.

GeGi raised her neck and looked at the pile of clothes that was once her salvation. In the middle of the cop’s shirt a bulge was shaking as the woman inside kept shrinking and transforming into something else.

“Mendez! Mendez!” yelled the critic without receiving an answer.

The bulge, now so, so small, began to move towards the neck of the shirt, Geraldine’s neck hurt as she bendt to look at what came out.

An ordinary gray pigeon.

“No, no, no, no...” sobbed the woman impotently.

The pigeon cooed, shaking her wings and feathers, she seemed upset, worried and confused, a lot of troublesome things to hold in such a small bird brain.

It was at that point that Geraldine realized that she wasn’t escaping her twisted fate.

She began to truly sob and cry in despair, laying down on the floor, helpless and impotent.

“No, no, no, no...” she repeated.

The once cop pigeon cocked her head, completely obvious to what she was seeing. Geraldine’s arms and legs were thinning down, fingers curling as if there was no bone inside, the skin wrinkled and harsh.

Roots.

Her limbs were becoming the roots of the cactus she now almost was.

And not just her limbs, she felt the same dryness on her facial skin, her hair was falling out, her head was becoming smaller and longer.

“No, no, no please... I’m so horny...” sobbed her distorted voice as the changes kept going.

Meanwhile Mendez the pigeon found that flower in the lower part of the weird noisy plant in front of her very intriguing, it was very attractive, it smelt good.

The bird walked with wide strutting steps towards the plant and shoved her beak inside the flower.

As GeGi lost total control of her limbs, her face and her head her voice melted into a long tearful moan.

“Ooooooh...” she cried, she was shrinking, her spine twisting to put her hard, inert, green and needle-filled ass and breasts in line with that same face. “I don’t want to be a plant... I don’t want to be a cactus... please... please...”

She would have given anything to stop her transformation, her whole career, all of her glamour... but she was quite OK with Mendez rubbing her beak against her flower...

But that rubbing stopped when they both heard the steps.

The pigeon raised her head.

“Shoo! Shoo! Go away, find a mate and nest! No, you are not changing back, that’s what you get for trying to be a do-gooder, flying rat!”

Whether Mendez understood those words may never be known, the pigeon flapped her wings and flew away, scared of the woman.

Geraldine vaguely recognized that female voice... but her mind was feeling so dumb... everything was so hard...

“Who goeeeesh there...” her voice a struggling whisper. “Help meeh... Heeeelp meee...”

The hands were covered in thick leather gloves when they picked up Geraldine’s body and lifted it from the floor. More plant than person, her body didn’t weigh much, her root-like limbs and narrowing head hung down under her body.

“Nooooh...” Gasped Geraldine when she saw the face of the one holding her disgrace. “Youuuh...! Youuuh!”

It was Ellen, with her glasses pushed up on her forehead she didn’t look dorky at all, she looked confident... and pretty vile...

Witchy...

“Hey, there, GeGi.” she said as if it was just a totally ordinary morning.

With considerable effort Geraldine lifted her misshapen head.

“Biiitch... You knew...! Change meeeeh back...!”

“Change me back, change me back, it’s always that, as if there was something to change you back into!”

The lawyer began to walk towards the museum entrance carrying the transforming woman.

“Whyyy...? Whyyy you did dishhhh?” asked Geraldine as her roots shook with each step.

Ellen shrugged.

“A client’s request, he wanted you to become his last masterpiece. Honestly, the plan was to transform you during the presentation, but you just stormed off. It’s pretty neat that you came back on your own feet... root... things.”

They entered the museum, Geraldine knew exactly where Ellen was carrying her.

“Pleash... Pleash... You can’t do thish... I have aaah live... I wanna my liveh...”

“You are still alive, some would say even more so than before. Look, stop wasting your last human words, you are not going to convince a witch who is also a lawyer with words.”

“I haaaaaave fffame... Monyyyy...!”

“You think it’s about the money?”

“What theeeen...? Whyyyy?”

“Figure it out yourself, you’re gonna have a lot of time to think now.”

They reached the stand, Ellen raised her arms, Geraldine’s fading vision met the flowerpot again, she was on top of it.

There was no escape.

The dark soil made the tips of her roots tingle, alluring, calling, just like in her dream. She wanted so much to just dig into it.

She needed it.

One of her roots, the thickest of them all, the one made from Geraldine’s head, which still had the tiny shape of what could have been a face on one side, looked at Ellen one last time.

“Dish... Did... Donny... is a sowww?” she asked with a final exhalation of air.

Ellen raised her eyebrows and then spoke.

“Donny’s dead.” she said. “And you are a cactus.”

The lawyer lowered her arms.

The soil embraced Geraldine, a fresh warming hug.

The world became darkness.

A plant, completely a cactus, she was lost in herself as the roots dug and held her body to the flowerpot of her damnation. The world became a blur of sensations, of vague feelings, of motionless pleasure.

GeGi was gone.

Ellen looked down at the flower pot with the cactus in it, a healthy green cactus with four lumps and two beautiful flowers. You didn’t need to squint your eyes much to see some oddities in the plant, two of the lumps, the upper ones, looked like breasts. There was even a protuberance shaped like a nipple between the spines of the one that didn’t have a flower.

The other two looked like the pelvic area of a lady with it’s two buttocks, a cleft or a split that made you think of a vagina was underneath the other flower.

But apart from that.

Just a cactus in a flowerpot.

The last work of the great Donny which no critic could complain about.

“Oh, yes...!” the lawyer realized what was missing, she had put the pot on the stand herself, but it was looking the wrong way.

She turned it to the proper direction, on the front there were two pictures and a label between them. The first picture was of a young thin brunette woman, it was a sunny day on a beach, wearing a bikini and jacket while she hugged her legs and gave a wholesome smile to the camera.

The other was of GeGi, taken from some magazine, in all her cold and heartless glory with an expression of total contempt across her lips.

There were three lines on the label.

The first line read GeGi The Critic, but it was totally scratched, almost ineligible.

On the second you could read: Geraldine Giselle = Cactus

And the last one showed only two words: Now art.

Ellen took off the leather gloves and clapped her hands.

“Perfect.”

Satisfied, the lawyer began to walk away, she had to get rid of a car and a police bike, and also all the empty clothes, it was going to be a tiresome endeavour.

But work is work.

She left the scene.

The exhibition was left empty.

Morning sunlight entered from a skylight in the ceiling, it illuminated the stand, the flowers, the petals tingled and spread.