The Cactus

Henry has just broken up with his girlfriend Katherine, and is sitting in his room, staring at the one thing she left behind: a cactus she had bought for him. NOTE: Some profanity.

Henry gazed at the cactus on his windowsill, wondering if it could be used to plug the hole in his heart. Katherine had got him the cactus. She said it symbolised their love; some crap about resilience, or blossoms on a dry desert plain or some other bullshit. Oh yes, it was one of those fancy cactus species which bloomed. Then came the break-up. She said something about incompatibility, or that it was a bad time or something. "But what about the cactus?" he had asked, and she had looked up, left, right, behind; anywhere but at him, and mumbled something, then made up some incoherent excuse to leave.

So here he was, with a cactus that reminded him of a woman who might as well have taken that very plant and smacked him in the nether regions with it. He could throw it away, but that approach seemed somewhat inadequate. He was going to burn it.

A few minutes later, barely an instant to his numb mind, he stood in his backyard with lighter fluid, matches and an oversized cactus. This will be therapeutic. He had the cactus in flames mere moments later, his hands moving with an almost casual efficiency. He stood there, watching the cactus char, and then decided he had better things to do, and left it to burn in his backyard while he got some work done.

Two very harrowing hours of paperwork later, he returned to his backyard to the sight of a healthy green cactus. What. Narrowing his eyes at the offending plant, he began to consider the possibility that he had somehow gotten high without knowing it. Could you get high on cactus fumes? Or maybe he had finally snapped from the stress of paperwork, and this was how his brain chose to inform him of it. Well then, there was nothing to be done but to burn it again.

Henry stood in his backyard with a sledgehammer. He had tried to find an axe, but found to his amazement that he did not possess one. He could have made do with a chopper, but anything worth killing was worth overkilling, right? It was half an hour later, and he had stood there watching the cactus burn, and burn, and burn some more, and all the cactus did was char. Then he had looked away and when he looked back it was green as a goddamn leprechaun again. At this point, he had no choice but to physically decimate it himself, really. With a sharp indrawn breath and a heave, he brought the sledgehammer down in an overhead swing, the head of the sledgehammer beautifully smashing into the piece of green that was his lawn. A miss. He tried again, swinging across instead of overhead this time, and dropped first his jaw, then the hammer, as it simply bounced off the cactus as if it were made of industrial rubber. Clearly, more drastic measures were required.

Poised like a superhero of some sort, Henry chuckled to himself about the sheer irony of owning a wood chipper, for some reason, when he didn’t even have an axe. This would work. He was sure of it. Wood chippers trump everything. With an appropriately maniacal laugh, he lobbed the damned thing into the wood chipper with all the grace of a James Bond villain. The sounds that came from the wood chipper were unholy: distilled terror mixed with fresh suffering, poured over a glass of solid cubes of shitshitshit oh God it's still alive. The cactus catapulted from the opening of the wood chipper whole, and punched into his crotch. Doubling over from the agony, he blinked away tears of pain, then looked up to see that sorry excuse of a plant standing in its flowerpot in front of him. The same damn flowerpot he had removed the cactus from before throwing it in the wood chipper.

Henry was many things, but he was not clueless. He knew when to fold and when was right now. With a sigh of resignation, he bagged the cactus in a thick garbage bag and walked down the street to dispose of it in the dumpster. There. He would never have to see that damn cactus again. Jogging back to his house, he decided that he had had enough for a day and collapsed on to his bed, massaging his temples and shaking his head at the sheer absurdity of it all. An invulnerable cactus �" who would have thought. He fell into a restful sleep without realizing it, his poor psyche unable to take much more of this ridiculousness.

Waking up to a numb arm and stiff muscles later that day, Henry had almost forgotten about the cactus. It was already night, and he still had work to do. Pulling himself off the bed slowly to accommodate his aching body, he flicked the light switch then shuffled over to his desk beside the windowsill where the cactus sat. Where the……cactus……sat. He could have sworn that cactuses were capable of expressions then, and this one was giving him one of false innocence, in its smug, bastardly, prickly way, almost as if to say, “Oh, just a normal cactus here, chilling out, enjoying the warm summer night.” Uttering a string of curses that he never realized he even knew, Henry carefully considered his options.

Henry dived onto his bed, snatching his phone off the receiver on his bedside table, and dialed the one number he had ever memorised by heart. It rang four excruciating times. Four times too many, and when the familiar voice on the other end gave a tentative “Hello?” it was like being kicked in the face with every single emotion he had experienced throughout his relationship.

“Katherine, the cactus you gave me-“

“Henry, I thought I made it really clear, it’s over.”

“Okayyeahsure but listen, the cactus you gave me, I’ve been trying to get rid of it, and I can’t.”

“I know you’ll need some time to get over it but this is really your problem, and I don’t think we should talk to each other anym-“

“No you’re not listening I tried to burn it and it wouldn’t burn and I couldn’t smash it with a hammer or wood chipper and then I threw it away and it came back HelpMeGetRidOfItPleaseKath.”

“You……tried to…Okayyyy, Henry - I think you just need some time by yourself, maybe see a therapist or a counselor or whatever, and please don’t call me again.”

Then just the tone, beeping at him like a big “Go F**k Yourself”. This was it then. There was only one thing left to do. He walked over to the locked drawer where he kept his pistol, the one he had bought a long time ago just in case he ever needed one for whatever reason. He couldn’t stand the sight of that damn cactus a second longer. Henry held the barrel against the side of his head, where he imagined it pointing at the center of his brain. Alright then. A quick trigger pull, the jarring feeling of an explosion happening right beside his head, then the bliss of oblivion.

Henry opened his eyes to what looked suspiciously identical to the bedroom he had just shot himself in. Hands shaking incontinently, he brushed his fingers along the side of his head. No wound. Looking to his left, he saw the bedroom wall, a hole where the bullet had gone. There was an empty cartridge on the floor. The damn cactus on the windowsill, still mocking him.

Well. S**t.

Author's Note

This story was the first thing I ever wrote after not doing any writing in what must have been 5 years or so. It was based on a prompt I took off the internet, which was "Write a story about a person/thing that won't/can't die".

Just want some general feedback, what works, what doesn't, and whether you think this is a good or bad piece of writing. Be harsh, be critical, tear it apart like your childhood bully wrote it.