Moment of truth (freewrite)

If Jonah's friends could have seen him now, not one would've been able to recognize him. Not the slumped, deserted man crying lamely into the folds of his own shirt, certainly, it just wasn't like him and it was just better that they were all dead and away, unable to see him now one way or the other. He hadn't intended for them to die, naturally, but when does anyone? He wasn't a sociopath, he didn't actually mean to hurt people. It just...happened.
It wasn't an accident, no he meant to do it, usually, but it wasn't as if he took any pleasure in it. He was not weird in that way, though he was a bit weird in quite a few ways, that was granted. And of course, he'd had no idea they'd die, not when he'd first opened the book. Otherwise, my God, he would've never opened it.

Alright, he would've skimmed. I mean, some of them fuckers, sure, he would've preferred not to have around and if that could be...arranged with no one else getting in harm's way, then that would've been just peachy, but he would've never hurt his real friends, no. Not intentionally, but sometimes things don't happen like we want them, do they?
Anyway, they were gone now and there was nothing he could do about them now, so there was no point in moping. They wouldn't have wanted him to do that, surely, they would've wanted him to continue with his life, to pursue his adventures, laugh and all that. Not that he'd done much of either thus far. Blasted thing, see, that was the issue, really. The only time Jonah had actually tried to do something adventurous and wild was when he'd opened that bloody book.

He knew, you know? That was the most screechingly annoying part, that he'd known not to open it, but they'd all egged him on.
'Go on, Jonnie, go on. What are you, chicken?'
And they'd all called him chicken for so very long, all those times at lunch where he hadn't been all that sure where to sit or how to do it, how to wield the fork so that the octopus didn't fly out and everybody laughed at him. Chicken, chicken, chicken. That was him and to be honest, no one had expected him to open that book. Not young Jonah who was scared of his own shadow, he just didn't have it in him. And the truth was...he did not.
He'd never thought he'd open that damned book, never even crossed his mind – the Professor's beloved book, the one he threatened everyone with to the point that it was almost a class joke – there was nothing, surely, just their old, gray teacher trying to keep them in check. Nothing bad will happen, Jonnie, just go ahead, we won't tell...

They'd forced him to do it, so it wasn't his fault. No, he couldn't go around blaming himself now. That would get him nowhere and right now he needed to be strong. Or did he?
An unsettling thought scuttled into his head, all out of sudden. What if he didn't really need to be careful – after all, what was there to fear? The professor? He was dead, just like all the others. The other children? Come on, there was not one still standing, surely they couldn't harm him now. There was, he realized, not one soul living on this planet left for him to fear. No taunts, no wild, unkind laughter coming his way. For the first time ever, nobody cared about young Jonah, that his back was a bit more bent than the rest, that his sandwiches smelled so uncanny like home, in a time when it was desperately uncool to be reminiscent of home.

Cradling the book in his arms, Jonah parted the pages slowly, reading each name out loud. Conan. Bryan. Angelique. Each name dragged after it a face, bloodied and contorted, grappling with a most agonizing death. His fallen friends. No, not his friends, his fallen tormentors. He'd killed them all, and he thought, in vain, that he could've let them live. But then again, why would he when they hadn't been willing to let him?

He read their names out loud and after each one whispered two words.

Be gone.

And they were.

I have no idea where this came from, but I figured, like with most of my writing - why the hell not? The prompt was 'be gone'. Check out @mariannewest. She's cool.

Thank you for reading,

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