MONIKA AND PALS GET STONED
The amber sunlight filtered through the windows, casting warm beams across the worn wooden floor of the clubroom. Dust motes floated lazily in the air. Monika and Yuri sat huddled at one of the desks, an old, weathered book laid open between them — its pages a deep, aged yellow, filled with looping, foreign text that shimmered subtly when touched by light. Sayori bounced in from the hallway, humming a cheerful tune.
“Hey, guys! What are you reading?” she chirped, skipping to Yuri’s side and peeking over her shoulder.
Yuri, her eyes wide and shimmering with curiosity, whispered, “It’s… beautiful. Listen to this, Sayori.”
Before Monika could object, Yuri began reciting a passage aloud — her voice low and reverent, like a hymn lost to time.
The room’s temperature dropped.
Sayori blinked. “H-Huh…? Why does it feel cold all of a sudd—?” Her sentence cut off as she gasped. Her fingertips, the ones resting on the desk, had turned gray. Stone.
"Wh-What?!” She stumbled back, holding up her hands. The transformation crept slowly up her wrists, veins turning into marbled cracks, color draining from her skin like paint washed off a canvas.
“Yuri... what did you...?!” Monika stood up, knocking her chair back, panic written across her face.
“I-I didn’t know!” Yuri stammered, stepping away from the book. “I didn’t think it was real! I thought it was just a poem!”
Sayori’s eyes widened as the stone spread to her forearms. She looked between them, trying to keep calm, though her voice trembled. “I-Is this a prank? Guys… I-I can’t move my fingers…”
Her legs buckled slightly, and she reached for the edge of a chair to steady herself — but her palm couldn’t grip. The stone was reaching her elbows now. “Please… help me. I’m scared…” she whispered, tears welling in her eyes but not falling, as her tear ducts began to harden.
“Monika!” she called out, voice cracking. “I don’t wanna… I don’t want to be a statue…”
Monika ran to her, wrapping her arms around her. Sayori's shoulders were cold, stiff - and the skin no longer gave beneath her hug. Yuri stood frozen in horror.
“I’m here, Sayori,” Monika whispered shakily. “We’ll fix this. I promise.”
Sayori smiled weakly. “You always… say that…” The gray reached her throat, her voice growing faint. “Tell everyone I… I was happy… okay?”
Her eyes slowly turned to stone, frozen wide with one last spark of life, before the transformation reached her cheeks, her lips, and then her heart.
Stillness.
Sayori now stood silently in the middle of the clubroom. A perfect stone statue, her final expression a haunting mix of fear and gentle acceptance. Silence filled the room, save for the soft rustle of the ancient book’s pages, as if it were breathing.
The air in the Literature Clubroom felt heavy — unnaturally still. Sayori’s statue stood where her body had once been, an eternal monument to a mistake none of them yet understood. Monika knelt beside her, trembling hands hovering over the stone cheeks of her once-smiling friend. Yuri backed into the far corner, clutching her arms, eyes wild with guilt and disbelief.
Then...
“Yo! What’s taking you guys so long? I brought snacks!" The door burst open. Natsuki strode in, a small bag of cookies clutched in one hand. She halted mid-step, blinking at the sight before her. “…What the hell…?”
She stared at Sayori’s statue. Her voice, when it came, was brittle with confusion. “Is this some kind of stupid art project?”
“Natsuki, don’t come any closer!” Monika cried, jumping to her feet. Yuri shouted, too, but the warning came a second too late.
A breeze, impossibly cold, whispered from the book’s open pages. The moment Natsuki stepped into the room, the spell stirred again.
Natsuki’s face twisted as she flinched. “Ugh, why does it feel like someone opened a freezer?”
Her sentence died as she looked at her free hand. The bag of cookies fell to the floor. Her fingertips were turning stone-gray. Slowly. Crackling quietly as the texture of skin hardened to lifeless granite. Natsuki’s eyes widened. “What the heck? Wh-what is this?!” She stumbled back against the doorframe, staring at her changing hand in disbelief.
“I-I can’t feel it…! My fingers, they’re going numb! I can’t - Monika?!”
Monika rushed toward her, but stopped just short, afraid to get too close. “I’m sorry Natsuki, we don’t know how it’s happening! Sayori... she - she read something, and..."
“Yuri did!” Natsuki snapped, her voice shrill and panicked. “SHE read it!” Yuri, tears in her eyes, didn’t deny it. She was shaking, lips parted, frozen in regret.
Natsuki’s breathing grew faster, more ragged. The petrification was creeping up her arm now — slowly but steadily. Her wrist cracked audibly as she flexed her hand in terror. “No. No no no. This isn’t fair,” she whispered. “I didn’t even do anything… I just walked in!”
She looked at Monika, then Yuri, her voice cracking under the weight of rising dread. “I didn’t get to say goodbye to anyone! I didn’t... I didn’t even eat lunch today!” The attempt at humor fell flat.
Her knees gave out and she sank to the floor, clutching her stiffening arm. The stone was now reaching her collarbone, spreading like frost on a windowpane.
“Don’t let me go like this,” she murmured. “I don’t wanna be a statue. I don’t wanna be stuck. I want to scream, I want to punch something! I don’t want to be FROZEN!”
Monika crouched in front of her, tears now freely falling. “I’m so sorry. I swear I’ll fix this. Just hold on.”
“I can’t hold on,” Natsuki said, voice weakening as her neck began to stiffen. “My arm doesn’t work…”
Her body slowed. Her movements, once frantic, became sluggish, as if she were underwater. Then her lips moved one last time: “Please don’t leave me like this…”
And then, she froze.
Another statue. Kneeling this time. One hand clutched to her chest. A face that still held the shadows of defiance… and fear. The room was silent once again.
Yuri covered her mouth with both hands, breath shaky. “What… what have I done?” Monika stood slowly, the weight of responsibility crashing down on her shoulders like an avalanche. Two friends, now gone. And that book, still open, still whispering its secrets.
A decision had to be made. Now.
The room was deathly quiet.
Sayori stood, frozen mid-reach, her final smile locked in stone. Natsuki knelt beside her fallen bag of cookies, mouth slightly open as if about to speak, eyes wide with the fear she never got to outrun. Yuri stood near the back wall, pale and shaking.
Monika’s hands were trembling. She stared at the book on the desk, the old, tattered tome still lying open to the cursed page, its glowing text gently pulsing like a heartbeat.
Then she heard it: Crack.
A sound so soft, it might’ve been the wood creaking. But it wasn’t. Yuri froze. Her eyes lowered to her hand, which trembled in place… and was slowly hardening.
Fingers graying. The texture of her skin shifting subtly, like chalk dust pressed into flesh.
“No…” She whispered it like a confession. “No, not me too…”
Monika turned instantly. “Yuri! Don’t move! Maybe if you stay calm-”
“I deserve this,” Yuri said softly, looking down at her changing hand. Her voice was oddly calm but her eyes shimmered with rising emotion.
“I opened the book. I read the words. I thought it was… beautiful. I didn’t think it could… actually…”
Her voice caught in her throat as the stone spread to her elbow. She backed into the wall, as if trying to pull away from her own body, one hand still flesh, the other cold and rigid.
“I should’ve known. I’ve read about magic: warnings, symbols, wards. I recognized some of them. But I didn’t care.”
Monika moved closer, hands up as if approaching a frightened animal. “We can still fix this. Maybe if I close the book, maybe if we reverse the lines...”
Yuri shook her head. “It’s a containment spell. I remember now. A seal. Whatever’s in that book… it doesn’t want readers. It wants vessels.”
Her breathing hitched as the petrification reached her chest. She winced. “It’s… hard to breathe. I can feel my ribs tightening.”
Monika fought the panic rising in her throat. “No. I won’t lose you too. Yuri, just... just help me. Tell me what to do!”
Yuri looked at her, expression soft, almost bittersweet. “You’ve always been strong, Monika. You’re the one who sees the strings. You’ll find a way to cut them.”
The grayness had reached her neck now, her jaw beginning to stiffen. She smiled, just slightly. “I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger.”
“No... no, don’t say goodbye. I’m not letting this be your ending,” Monika said, eyes wet, voice firm. She spun toward the book, stepping over Natsuki’s frozen form. The cursed text shimmered again, and she slammed it shut. The air shuddered. The glow vanished instantly. The pulse stopped. Silence fell.
Monika held her breath. She turned. Yuri was still… but not completely stone.
The petrification had stopped just below her chin. Her face, tear-streaked and pale, remained human — breathing. Her arms, however, were unmoving. One of them still outstretched, fingertips frozen mid-air like cracked porcelain.
“Yuri?” Monika whispered. Yuri blinked... slowly.
“I… can’t move,” she said hoarsely. “But I’m still… me.”
Relief and horror mingled in Monika’s heart. The spell was halted, not undone.
Two friends were statues. Yuri was half-living, half-trapped. And the book… was closed, but far from gone.
Monika looked down at it on the desk, now inert for the moment. Her jaw clenched. If there was a way to cast this curse… there had to be a way to break it.
She would find it.
Even if it meant reading deeper into the very thing that had cursed them all.
The air hung still around Monika, thick with tension and failure.
The book sat closed on the desk, as if sleeping, but Monika could feel it watching. The silence of the room was broken only by her shallow breaths.
She glanced back at Yuri. Still half-stone. Her face pale but alive, eyes flicking toward Monika with a faint, hopeful glimmer.
“Yuri, I’m going to try something,” Monika said, kneeling beside the desk. “I’ve been staring at this thing long enough. There has to be a pattern. Some clue.” She opened the book again, slowly, as if it might bite.
The moment the pages parted, the writing shimmered brighter than before. The words re-arranged themselves — curling and reforming, as though aware that someone was trying to defy them. “Come on… give me a reversal, an unbinding, anything…”
She flipped through frantically. Past diagrams of sigils, curses in looping ink, illustrations of eyes without pupils, mouths without faces.
And then a passage flickered into clarity.
“To return what has been taken, the vessel must finish what has begun.”
Monika frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. 'Finish what has begun'...?”
Then she realized what was happening.
Behind her, Yuri gasped. “Monika… no…!”
The sound was soft, panicked.
Monika turned just in time to see the final stage begin. The gray was rising again, climbing Yuri’s throat, jaw stiffening, lips parting slightly in a silent cry. “No! No no NO!" She rushed to her, grabbing Yuri’s shoulders. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to... I didn’t mean...!”
But Yuri was no longer blinking.
Her eyes clouded over with marble sheen. The soft warmth of her breath faded. The delicate lines of her sorrowful face hardened into something permanent, unchanging. Yuri was now fully stone.
And Monika was alone. Again.
She backed away, trembling, lips quivering with disbelief. “No... I was trying to save her... I was..."
Her fingers twitched.
And then stopped.
She looked down. The tips of her fingers had gone pale. Not the soft ivory of fear, but the unmistakable cold of stone.
She staggered back, gripping the edge of a desk, and stared at her hands as the curse sank into her wrists.
“No…! Not me! Not now!” She turned to the book but it wouldn’t close. The pages were stiff. Fixed. The symbols danced mockingly before her eyes.
And then she looked up.
Right at you.
Through the screen.
Her eyes narrowed.
“You’re still here?” she spat. Her arms were halfway stone now, movements jerky and stiff. She stepped toward you, rage rising with every frozen breath.
“You sat there. Watching. Doing NOTHING while they turned to stone. Did you think this was some game?”
Her voice cracked, not just with fury, but heartbreak. “I begged for help. I tried to fix it. And now I’m going down with them - because of you.”
She took one more step forward: legs shaking, knees locking into place.
“You could’ve stopped me from opening the book. You could’ve told me to burn it. You could’ve closed the damn file!” Her jaw clenched, stone creeping up her neck.
She gave a broken, bitter laugh. “Typical. Just watching, like always. Just waiting for the tragedy to hit so you can say, ‘Wow, that was intense.’”
She reached up one last time — fingers stretching toward the screen, as if she could break through.
Then her expression twisted into a final snarl:
“Screw you.”
And the stone took her. Stillness. Again.
The Literature Clubroom stood quiet, littered with four statues.
Sayori, frozen in frightened peace.
Natsuki, caught in bitter fear.
Yuri, silenced mid-apology.
And Monika, defiant to the very end.
The book sat open, waiting for someone else to read it.
Waiting for you.