Bedazzled

It was the most striking sculpture he'd ever seen, curved to natural perfection, encrusted with dazzling jewels that lit up like tiny suns and mirror eyes that reflected the sorrow in his soul. He stood and stared in the middle of the street, captivated by this amazing figure of an immaculate person. It was so flawless it seemed alien, almost too attractive to be human. It stood proud like the most gorgeous of all heaven's angels, upon its pedestal and taking centre stage. The bewildering thing about it was that it could only have been crafted by the hands of peasants. There were no more artists in his world, only common folk who could never have poured into it the love that had shaped in such a splendid way... So how could it be so radiant? It was an irrelevant mystery. What mattered was that she was beautiful.

At first the boy paid short, infrequent visits, since he had other errands to attend to - commitments to friends and family, and a well-paying job - but as time progressed his passing-bys became sit-ins, as the rest of the world faded away and this incredible piece of art became everything to him.

The world seemed different now that she was in it. Unlike in movies and story books, where everything becomes bright and glowing when a character falls in love, his experience of life became grey and mundane beyond her.

He'd started out as a little distracted, but gradually, as his obsession grew, he became trapped in a downward spiral of self sacrifice and new scars. friends gradually merged into the fog that was his world beyond her. By the 3rd month of fantasy he'd stopped returning their calls, so they'd stopped making the effort of attempting contact. They could no longer connect with the dazed, absent boy they thought they once knew. His work faded away, he was fired after a week of no appearances, but he didn't care. He didn't even realise.

One night his need grew too strong, and he stole the statue away in the night. It seemed that nobody would notice, they never even paid attention to her. Now he was able to spend hours and hours at a time with his woman.

Sometimes she was warm to his touch, and he felt she loved him back. He could slide his hands across her curves and feel the connection between man and marble. Her warmth was a solace to him, it lifted him up and filled him with colour and life. But the longer he spent with her, the cooler she became. He thought to give her space, and left her, sometimes for weeks at a time, but when he returned she was colder than before. Soon it pained him to touch her, her frozen icy surface burning his skin. His hands became scabbed and scarred. But he refused to give up hope, and over the next month built a huge incubator for her. It was almost equal to her in it's exquisiteness, and he was very proud of himself when he completed her gift. He wrapped it around her, his great huge warming hug machine, but when he returned to her the next day he found, once again, she had not changed. She was not warmer. Puzzled, he decided his creation was surely faulty. He proceeded to craft an incubator that would be larger, better, and flawless. This task would take him years, building on what he'd already made until the hug machine dwarfed his object of worship. And for all his efforts he would suffer.

But still it made no difference, no matter how much he tried. He spent the rest of his life trying to warm her up, eventually dying in the process from exhaustion and malnutrition. It never once occurred to him that the cold was not coming from outside, that his own creation only served as a wall between him and the truth, and that no matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried to keep her warm, he could never change what she was.

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