TWO DAYS LATER
I always make sure my customers are satisfied, and part of that total satisfaction guarantee is a microscopic camera attached to the large wooden crate that arrives at my client's house and is awkwardly hauled upstairs to his room by him and his frustrated parents. I'm elsewhere, doing other things, but later I watch the recorded footage that was transmitted from the camera. My client is a 19-year-old nerd with curly hair. I see him lock the bedroom door and open up the crate with a crowbar (his Half Life skills must be formidable), and I see his face fill with awe & wonder as he observes the nude marble body of the girl inside.
He circles around her, looking at her reverently from all angles. Eventually, he goes and sits down on the bed. He says to the statue, "Please don't be angry. Just don't panic, and we'll talk about it." He's obviously nervous... he seems to be more afraid of the girl than she should rightly be of him. After a few minutes of reflection, he takes a deep breath and pushes a button his new wristwatch. The girl suddenly finds herself alive again, completely naked in the locked bedroom of the man who paid to have her stripped, transformed into a statue, and transported across the Atlantic.
She smiles at him. "Hi, you. So, what's this all about?"
Surprisingly, he's the only flustered one here. "I... I just wanted you to be safe; please don't hate me. Ummm.... there's something you can wear," he says, gesturing to a freshly-purchased nightgown sitting on the desk next to where she stands, surrounded by several empty jars of Marmite.
She looks at the nightgown briefly then shakes her head. "I've been petrified in a box for two days; I'm enjoying this feeling of freedom." She blushes a bit.
The boy seems to have trouble looking directly at her; he too is blushing and keeps looking away. "So you're not even angry?"
She's being so sincere right now. "Well, I'm a little confused; this is all rather out of the ordinary. So, what, am I like your slave now? How does this work?"
He holds up his wristwatch, which is on his right wrist for some reason despite him being right-handed. "Basically, I can turn you to stone or return you to life any time I want. Obviously I'm going to want you to be soft & warm as much as possible, but as a security feature, you'll automatically turn back to stone we're ever more than about a hundred feet apart. So when I leave the house, you'll either have to come with me, or turn back into a statue for a while, depending on the situation."
"That's pretty cool. If you do have to go away temporarily, I want to be petrified outside in the lawn so I can enjoy the fresh air and be admired by all the neighbors. But... what are your parents going to think about all this?"
"Well, in a few days, you're going to move with me to my own place -- I recently came into some money, and there's no reason to be living here anymore. Until then, we're just going to have to stay quiet and you may have to stay petrified most of the time so they won't find you. I told them that the large wooden crate was a new computer for school so that they wouldn't get suspicious."
She smiles at him again. "Well, if this had to happen to me, I'm at least glad it was you."
He starts to stammer a reply, but she walks over and wraps her arms around him, embracing him, leaning her head against his shoulder, closing her eyes, and sighing in comfort and contentment.
I stop watching the footage -- I know I've completed my mission successfully, and the rest of this story is up to the young man and the girl.
Also in England in that very moment: me. I'm some distance away, at my own hotel room preparing for another task. Sometimes one mission leads directly into another. These youngsters I've been dealing with are in a cult, as I've mentioned, and apparently word travels quickly through the grapevine (or the so-called "circlejerk" in this case). Whispers of the kidnapping/petrification incident have apparently gotten around, and I've received a number of inquiries, though only one person had both the money to pay and an interesting mission to offer me. How could I say no?
I whistled a happy tune as I boarded the train for Oxford.
The end, for now.