Melancholia

Remnants 30 - Bronze Runner

One day, while Jessica was bathing, she found a weird brown spot on her ankle. She tried to wipe, to wash it off, but it would not come off.

So she asked her dad, "Dad, there's this weird spot on my foot. It won't come off."

"Show me it," he said, taking her leg. "Hmm, I've never seen anything like this before, so we'd better see a doctor. Let's go now."

"Okay, Dad."

A while later, they were in the car, driving to the clinic. Outside the car window, the merry and noisy neighbourhood was now very quiet and peaceful, for the pandemic had kept everyone panicking inside their homes.

"Sigh..."

Soon, they arrived. Quite a number of patients were there, but they eventually found a seat. Looking around, there were a lot of people, old and young alike, but weirdly, most of them were female. It was weird, and she thought that maybe the men weren't doing their job protecting the women.

About three quarters of an hour later, it was their turn. They entered the room, and just a short while after examining her, the doctor said, "I'm sorry, I can't help you. This is a symptom of the morphovirus. I can only prescribe some medicine to help slow down it, but be warned that..."

"How long can she stay normal for?"

"Two to three months."

"I see. Do you know what she will become?"

"It seems that she'll turn into metal, but what exactly, I can't be sure."

"Okay, thank you doctor."

"Thank you doctor."

They took the prescribed medicine and returned home.

"You understand what will happen?"

"Yeah, I do."

"Let's just enjoy the rest of our time together."

So when they arrived home, Jessica wrote a bucket list, a list of things that she wanted to do. Then, with all the help from her friends and family, she finally completed them all. All except one, that was to live. By then, five months had passed, and she was still rather normal. So, she stopped eating the prescribed medicine.

One day, as she was going on her evening jog, she found her legs slowly getting heavier by the minute. She thought that she was getting tired, so stood her by the old oak tree. Seeing that her shoelaces came off, she bent down just to find that her foot was solid bronze.

"Ugh, bronze," she thought. She had always hated bronze, for whatever competition she entered, all she ever could get was bronze, and now too. As the bronze crept up her legs, her shoes and socks slowly morphed into a bronze plate, which slowly grew into a pedestal, pushing her upwards.

At this point, she tried to run away, but her legs did not respond; her legs were slowly turning to bronze as well. She screamed, but nobody cared, for they knew they could not do anything, and even she knew that herself. So she began to pose, setting up herself to become a lovely statue, which she thought she was turning into.

Not long after, the bronze reached up to her waist, her tracksuit bottoms were now bronze along with everything under her waist. Now she could only move her arms and head as her torso was stiffening too.

With or without her posed, the bronze continued creeping up her immobile body. And with her hands and arms now locked into place, her final moments were closer than ever. Her neck it passed through quite easily, now not breathing or even requiring to was she, and her hair and ears turned bronze too. Her mouth was gone, closed up and her nose was solid as well. Finally, her eyes were the last thing intact, letting her look around one final time, as they too, turned to bronze, reducing her vision to black, or so she thought...

After a while, she could still see, albeit without being able to look around or rotate her eyeballs. Only to the front she could see, like a runner in a marathon. For she was now just that: a bronze statue of a female marathon runner. On her pedestal there slowly carved out the words emerged: "Jessica the Bronze Marathon Winner". To her, the words didn't matter, for she was just to be a statue in the park, to be admired by all. Nobody in the park even cared about her (or it), or that she (or it) was a living and breathing human girl before this. They all just appreciated her as a new decoration of the park.

A day later, her father finally found her, after having searched almost everywhere that she had gone before she went to the park that day. Upon seeing her, he cried and hugged the statue, blaming himself for being unable to help her. Yet, there was nothing he could really do to help her. He just reported the incident to the morphopolice and donated her (or it) to the park's management, with the promise that it would always stay there in the same spot and be maintained regularly. He too, would regularly come to clean and wipe it.

Days passed, weeks passed, months passed, until a mysterious man showed up in the park, looking at the girl-turned-statue.

"So this was your daughter, huh?" asked the mysterious man to Jessica's father.

"Yes."

"Say, do you want your daughter back? I can help you turn her back."

"You can? How?"

"You must work for me first, then and only then can I tell you."

"Alright, anything for my daughter. I'll help you."

"Okay then, nice talk. I'll be back with the paperwork within three days. See you then."

And so a few days later, Jessica's father got a new job and a new quest to save his daughter from her eternal slumber of immobility.