"Only when..." Melissa paused, thinking, then decided, "Only when someone speaks to you as if you were a person."
Beldazarr the Djinn grinned wickedly. "It is done, O Mistress."
Drake felt a tingle and then the scene around him changed. He was in an artist's studio, a sculptors room in fact, and there was Karen, with her huge breasts, made even more incredibly huge by the fact that he was now two feet tall.
He hoped and prayed that she would see him, that she might actually talk to him and break the spell, but when she finally looked, the first words out of her mouth were, "Good god, those Asians sure must have a muscle fetish." She examined him closely. "Nice detail though. Almost looks real." She flicked a nail across his bronze crotch, then rubbed a hand across his nipples. "Must make a good bit from the old gay guys who cruise the hotel-motel art auctions, but hey, scrap is scrap." She tightened her hands around his pecs, grabbing him from behind, then strained, exclaiming, "Holy fuck, this thing's solid. No wonder it's scrap!"
She let go, and Drake watched her with pleading eyes, wishing that she'd talk to him like a person, also not knowing what the "seventy" Melissa had meant was, until a voice came in his head *This is Beldazarr, O former master. I have chosen seventy seconds, as my new mistress did not specify...*
Seventy seconds? It had just been over a minute, but Karen still hadn't talked to him like a person. Next she came over with large chains and grappling hooks which she placed under his arms and he found himself being lifted in the air as she said "Bronze is bronze, after all..." and Drake realized he was being lowered into the crucible!
The heat was intense, but curiously, not painful or agonizing like he'd thought it would be. Instead, he just liquified, mixing with more bronze, and realized that if he could think as a solid bronze statue, he could think as a crucible of molten metal.
A bit later, he found himself being poured into a new mold, then slowly cooling. Days passed, and then he felt the plaster being broken away as Karen removed him from the mold, buffing and polishing him, occasionally talking to god, but never actually to him. Drake found himself crated up and delivered, then found himself installed and unveiled as the new statue of the tribute to men's athletics.
Still, no one talked to him like he was a person, though folk came and ate lunch around him every day, until one night, after the basketball game and the celebratory drunkenness, one of the students came by, puked at the foot of his pedestal, then looked up blearily, "O, man, I'm so wasted. Could you help me out, dude?"
The Djinn's voice came in his head again: *The curse is lifted. Enjoy your new form, O former master.*
Drake felt a tingle through his limbs, as bronze turned to flesh, and then he dropped the solid bronze basketball he was holding in one outstretched hand. It fell, crushing the nearby bricks as he stepped down from his pedestal and the student continued to puke.
Drake helped him up, realizing the guy was tiny compared to him, and then the student looked up at him, "Fuck, man! What are you, like eight feet tall?"
Drake realized he must be that, if not over, his statue having been made in heroic proportion, as was usual with monuments. "Umm...yeah. I'm on the basketball team."
"Cool," said the student. "I'm Jerry. Oh fuck, I'm so wasted."
Drake supported his new friend. "Uh, I'm Drake." He glanced at his arm. He was nicely, though lankily, muscled, and had a deep bronze tan even in this light. "Let's get you some water."
He walked Jerry back over to the athletics building, taking a moment to compare himself to the doorframes, which he knew to be about seven feet. They came to around his nipples. He must be around nine feet tall!