After Monday

12 | Story

Wednesday afternoon, Cody and Ramona were sitting across from Liam in his kitchen. They'd pulled him aside very discreetly at school and told him with too serious facial expressions that they needed to talk to him about something important. Liam had had a bad feeling about it. It got worse when they said it was so important that they couldn't risk talking about it in public. So, Liam's house it was.

"You got any ice cream?" Ramona asked, glancing at the freezer.

"I think it's in the drawer in the middle," Liam answered, not too sure as he never ate any of it.

"It's almost empty," Ramona noted and pulled up some Ben & Jerry's cup. "You do remember to eat, right?"

Cody's eyes widened. "You actually look like you've lost weight."

"I just haven't been hungry," Liam muttered. "What did you guys want to talk about that's so important?"

Ramona gave Cody a conflicted look as she went to sit down next to him. "It's about you. And, well, Monday," she explained.

"God," Liam buried his face in his hands, not looking forward to what was coming next. "Of course it is."

"Did Monday ever... force you to do something you didn't wanna do?" Cody asked, seemingly choosing his words carefully.

"It sounds wrong when you put it like that," Liam said, fearing the possibility of them knowing about what he'd done.

"He means, like, do drugs or go to weird places... like her place... in the middle of the night..." Ramona was eyeing Liam intensely as she put a spoonful of ice cream in her mouth.

"Th- that also sounds wrong," Liam said, mentally scolding himself for stuttering. They can't know! How would they?!

"I'm sorry, Liam, but I think you know what we're trying to say," Cody said.

Liam hated how sweaty his palms were. It reminded him of recent memories he wasn't fond of.

"Can you guys just get to the point?"

Ramona got somewhat straight to the point. "About two weeks ago, did Monday call you over to help her do something with a dead body?"

Liam couldn't help reacting visibly, making the answer obvious to his friends. His breath got caught in his throat, eyes widening and hands shaking under the table. He felt his eyes starting to burn as he attempted saying something, but his stuttering most likely made no sense to the two sitting in front of him.

"You don't have to be scared that we kn-"

Liam interrupted Cody, managing to speak although he could feel that he was about to cry. "No. You guys weren't supposed to get involved. You can't be involved in this."

Now, the thing he'd wanted the least was reality. All the regret was burning inside of him. The vengeful being was all up in Liam's face, demanding him to turn himself in to the police and suffer isolation and loneliness for a great amount of time.

"Liam." Ramona's voice sounded so soft it made him feel even worse. "If you were forced to do it, why do you feel so bad?"

"Forced?" Liam let out a laugh in disbelief through the tears he didn't bother wiping away. "She called me because she had nobody else. I decided to go because I couldn't let her suffer by herself. Now Monday and I can go to jail for trying to get rid of a corpse and we'll probably never know how they died or why they were in her house and I'll probably die from an evil spirit's curse."