"Ouch!" Macy jumped back.

Tom grimaced. "Macy, I told you not to get too close."

Macy inspected her elbow, which had a few needles lodged in it. "I didn't think I was that close…" she glanced back up at the cactus. Had it moved?

The two of them had come to the Mojave desert to grab a couple of pictures of a cactus field that had sprung up out of nowhere in the past two months. Tom was the professional photographer; Macy had a casual interest in photography that became more serious when the two of them started dating. He often brought her out to photoshoots and guided her through some shots, and getting shots of this cactus field was the first project that Macy spearheaded herself.

These cacti made news for their sudden appearance and seeming rapid proliferation. It started when some plant expert noticed a couple of cacti that didn't belong to any genus he'd heard of, and over the course of two months it went from a handful of cacti to a dozen, doubling and quadrupling until it became half an acre of cacti sporadically packed together, anywhere from a few feet away from each other to so close they were intertwined. All of them fully grown by the time they were spotted.

Most remarkably, the cacti were all fairly uniform in shape and size. With a bit of variation, each cactus was 5-6 feet tall, with two arms that bent upwards at a 90 degree angle, forming almost a parody of what a person might envision when imagining a cactus. Each arm had a pink flower on top.

Given that they were person-sized, and person-shaped, people were calling them the "Mojave man-cacti." It didn't help that roughly have of them had feminine curves, complete with two bulbous mounds near where the arms extended, mimicking the same sexual dimorphism found in mankind.

And now their needles had pricked Macy's arm. She was slowly plucking them out, cursing with each yank. "They're like barbed or something," she said, though she couldn't see anything resembling a barb on them as she pulled them out. "It actually hurts more getting them out than they did going in."

"Well, definitely don't leave them in," Tom said, looking at her arm just long enough to convey the proper amount of sympathy, and then glancing away as soon as possible. It did not look pretty. He wanted to get back to taking photos. He had a shot lined up of two cacti that were intertwined in such a way that they resembled an embrace.

He also wanted to get out of there. They both did. They had properly sweat off all of their sunscreen, and they were baking in the heat. Tom wiped the sweat off his forehead for the 6th time. This was turning out to be a lot less fun than either of them had envisioned.

Macy groaned. "This doesn't look good." She directed Tom to look back at her arm, which he did with some reluctance. Her elbow and forearm were discolored where the needles struck her. "Do you think these guys are poisonous?"

Tom winced at the sight. "I hope not. Geez, Macy, how bad did this thing get you? You've got a dozen spines in you still."

It was true. No matter how many she plucked, it didn't seem like the amount of needles in Macy's arm ever decreased. Was her imagination playing tricks on her? The heat was making it hard to focus well enough to be sure. She decided to take a break from plucking and just held her arm in the air.

Tom went on his phone to see if anyone in the news had mentioned getting stung by the man-cacti. "Maybe we should call it a day and go to the hospital."

She wasn't sure why, but Macy didn't want to do that. "No," she said. "You can get a couple more shots. I'll monitor my arm, see if it gets worse."

Nothing came up on Tom's phone regarding man-cactus needles. It seems that aside from a couple researches Tom and Macy were some of the only ones to get close to this field. He sighed and put his phone away. "Fine. Just keep me updated. Does it hurt?"

Macy shrugged. "As long as I leave it, it's fine." The truth is, whenever she turned so that her stung arm got direct sunlight, it felt rather pleasant. The tension of multiple stings faded into a sort of acupuncture-induced relaxation. She found she didn't mind the intense heat so much, at least not in her arm. She hadn't dropped it to her side once since the sting, and certainly didn't want to now.

Tom reluctantly went back to lining up his photo, while Macy found a spot that wouldn't be too close to the other cacti and dug into the ground with her shoes. She couldn't explain it, but she wanted to get her feet in the dirt. As the hot sun beat down on the two of them, Macy's concerns ebbed along with the rest of her focus. The dirt was cool enough that she considered taking her shoes off to better feel it, even as her other arm lifted into the air to catch more sunlight.

She was getting delirious. It felt like she was having a heat stroke, but where she expected suffering there was instead a serene calm. She looked around at the man-cacti, and noticed they all had their arms up just like her. She giggled to herself, thinking that it was more like she was one of them.

Despite the difficulty she was having thinking, something about that nagged at her. Her arms out and up just like the other cacti. Her feet burrowed into the dirt. The discoloration on her arm. The discoloration…

She turned her head toward the affected arm and her eyes widened. There were undeniably more needles than there had been minutes ago. What's more, they ran all the way up and down the length of her arm. And her skin. It had taken on a very familiar leathery texture, turned a very familiar shade of green.

Macy had to say something. Something to express her alarm, to get Tom's attention. Something about what was happening to her. But as the harsh sun cooked her mind, and the worry started to evaporate like sweat, all she could figure out to say was "Green..!"

Tom looked up from his camera. "Christ, Macy!" He rushed toward her, and stopped just as quickly. If those needles did that to her, and she had her own needles, he couldn't get close.

"I feeeeel," Macy struggled to articulate, "funnn…" she trailed off. Her arms were stiff, with one having turned completely to cactus leather, her wrists bulging and her hand simplifying to match her man-cacti surroundings. She tilted her face toward the sun, her eyes closed. "It'sssso hottt… s'nice…"

It felt so nice to be in the heat of the sun. Why had it bothered her before? It kept her from thinking about bad things, like what was happening to her and what would happen if that thing happened. She needed more sun. She reluctantly bent her arms down to her waist and stripped her shirt off.

"Ooh!" She exclaimed, as the needles on her hand poked her side from where she grabbed her shirt, and that spot began to turn green too, growing its own needles, spreading its own pleasure where the sunlight touched it.

Tom was at a loss for words. "Macy, what's happening?" No, he knew what was happening. He just didn't understand it.

"Tommmmyyy," Macy cooed, "Y'shouldd gett'way…" even in her hazy state, she still tried to warn Tom. She used her one good hand to unbuckle her pants, and tried to shimmy them down her legs as the green affliction spread down one thigh, making her groan in pleasure.

Tom swiveled his head, fully realizing his surroundings. If Macy's sting was turning her into a cactus, then all of these cacti were contagious. Worse - if this cactus field had been growing in size, then that meant that all of these cacti were people.

He staggered back in horror, barely making sure he wouldn't be backing up directly into a cactus. He had to get out of here. Maybe very smart doctors or scientists could turn his girlfriend back to normal, but in order for them to do that he had to escape and tell everyone what was happening. No one knew. No one had ever been stung - and made it out alive.

Tom put one foot in the direction of his escape when pain shot through his shoulder blade, and he yelped. He turned to see what happened - a nearby cactus's arm was bent in a way he knew for a fact it hadn't been earlier. These cacti could move, and did so to infect others. And now he was stung.

"Nooooooo," Macy cried out even as it morphed into a moan, and she bit her lip, squeezing her exposed thighs together. The heat was more than just pleasurable, it was downright erotic, and a new kind of heat pooled between her legs. Needles were poking holes in her panties, and she ripped them off as best she could.

"Macyyy," Tom called out as his own mind began to slow. He slowly stepped toward her. If they were both going to be cacti, he at least wanted to be near her. "I'm sorryyy…"

Macy giggled. "S'okayy." She felt good. Peaceful. And deeply aroused. But she still had her bra on, and it was keeping her tits from feeling that glorious sun. "Help me," she gestured with her remaining arm, the green flesh making its way across her chest.

Tom did what he could, but he only had practice taking off girls' bras while they were facing him, and so he came close to her, reached around and unclasped it. He tried to ignore the stings he felt from his skin colliding with the needles on her leathery flesh. They only made his thoughts evaporate faster and his desire to take his own clothes off grow.

He laughed. It was funny, though he didn't remember why. He stripped quickly, before he could lose the use of his hands, and the two were standing naked, facing each other, giggling together.

As her chest swelled up with green, proudly absorbing the sun's pleasurable heat, macy's legs started to fuse together, and her feet burrowed deeper into the earth, forming roots. Meanwhile tom's feet started digging into the earth so that he could take root too. The arousal they felt filled their whole bodies, magnifying everywhere the sun touched. Their thoughts simplified into pleasure, their bodies shaping more and more like the same cacti that surrounded them.

macy felt so delightfully hot. It was so glad it had picked a spot with little shade, even surrounded by its siblings. tom was just happy that it could be near macy. Those were the last thoughts that went through either of their minds before there was no difference between them and any other cactus in the field.