Elspeth’s cactus

/ Doug Jacquier

This piece is in response to The Unicorn Weekly Challenge to write up to 250 words based on a photo prompt.

Elspeth had loved moving from Australia to their cottage in Spain when Derek had retired. The steep steps had made them feel on top of the world. They thought of themselves as exotic mountain goats, especially after they returned home each evening from the tapas bar, having usually had one too many sangrias.

Now Derek had gone off to Eternity to save them a spot and each day she longed more and more to join him. Like the succulents they had planted, her limbs were thick and fleshy and her swollen feet were no longer adapted to this environment. Unlike them, her need for water to cope with the heat had become obsessive and she paid the grocer’s boy to carry the big plastic bottles up to her eyrie.

One balmy autumn night, she decided she was well enough to go down to the tapas bar, for old time’s sake. When she’d finished her meal and started home, she thought ‘You’re just a silly old goat now and the mountain is too high.’ But she convinced herself that if she took it slowly, all would be well.

She made it but was far from well and joined the fallen leaves on the ground. Before her eyes closed, she looked at the garden bed and smiled to herself as she thought ‘Well, I’m cactus* too now.’

The grocer’s boy found her and called an ambulance, after he’d emptied her purse. He reasoned that she didn’t need money in Eternity.

*Australian slang for dead or broken

17 thoughts on “Elspeth’s cactus”

  4. A gentle tale of love, simple happiness and loss, wryly told.
    I have no idea why your sentence about ‘the succulents they had planted’ made me thingk of Burns and ‘My love is like a red red rose’! Maybe if he had lived in Australia that would have been his simile too?
    Thanks for the new word which finely brings your story full circle.

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  5. Such loveliness put me in a nostalgic mood, so I didn’t mind the twisty ethics of the grocer’s boy. I don’t think Elspeth would have minded his pragmatic thinking, either.

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