Free The Summer Is Ended and We Are Not Yet Saved by Joey Comeau Page B

without you yelling or fighting back and escaping. So, I’m sorry about this.” He drew the phone back over his shoulder and then swung it hard into Mitchell’s face.
    Once the camper was unconscious, it was easy to duct tape him to the chair, to put tape over his mouth. He cut some garbage bags down the side and opened them up to lay under Mitchell’s chair.
    It was better than being in love, really.
    Tony taped the garbage bags to the floor, so they wouldn’t slide or shift.
    With love, there was always the possibility that your love was unrequited.
    Mitchell groaned, and Tony slapped him on the cheek a couple times.
    “You okay?” he said.
    Mitchell opened his eyes and blinked confusedly.
    “Knock, knock?” Tony said.
    Mitchell struggled against his restraints, and his eyes went wide.
    “Come on,” Tony said. “It’s no fun if you don’t play along. Okay let me help. I say ‘Knock, knock,’ then you say, ‘Who’s there?’”
    Mitchell struggled harder, and the priest sighed.
    “Okay,” Tony said. “Who’s there?”
    The camper tried to holler, his cries coming out muffled and unintelligible.
    Now it was Tony’s turn to look confused. “Murpmf baaaaarmurmf a mrmph who?”
    Mitchell tried to holler again, and this time he struggled so hard that his chair fell over forward and he smashed his face on the floor. Blood poured suddenly from his nose onto the black garbage bag, and Tony let out a laugh.
    “That’s pretty good, actually,” he said. “I’ve never heard that one.”
    There was a knock on the office door, and then the sound of someone trying the handle.
    “Sir?”
    The door opened, and Quinn stuck his head into the room.
    “Are you okay in here? I thought I heard a crash.”
    On the floor, Mitchell let out a wet groan and started to sob.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Martin,
    I can’t remember if I’ve written to you already. I wandered those haunted hotel hallways for what seems like days, looking for a woman named Julia. Actually, I think I looked for a woman named Julia for the first few days, and then I got confused and started knocking on doors and asking people if they had seen Linda Blair. Most people just shut their doors in my face, but one man tried to bite me. He had big spider mandibles instead of a mouth, Martin. What is wrong with this city? They don’t tell you about this Toronto, the real Toronto. It smells like garbage and all night long the CN Tower weeps.
    I’ve had a terrible headache since finding my way back to the room. The ceiling is back where it’s supposed to be, but now there are two beds, and it looks like someone is asleep in the new one. God, the headache, Martin. I wish you were here to make me a cup of tea. But I figured out my own solution. I am intrepid! Do you tell your friends that? That your mother is intrepid? I hope you are making new friends at camp, and telling them right now about how intrepid your mother is.
    I don’t understand when people call someone a mama’s boy like it’s a bad thing. I’ve never trusted a man who didn’t have a good relationship with his mother. I wish I could have known my own mother. I’m jealous when I hear my friends talk about their mother worrying or their mother chiding them about their life choices. Their mothers were the first and most important women in their lives. How do you trust a man who doesn’t treat his with respect? How will he treat you if that’s how he treats his mother?
    What am I talking about? Oh, my headache. I found the cure for headaches, Martin. My brain felt like it was getting tighter and tighter until finally my eyeball popped out, dangling viscous purple gunk. God, what a relief! If I had known that this was the cure for headaches, I would have popped my own eyeball out years ago. It took me a half hour to get it back in my socket.
    In fact I had just gotten the eyeball into its socket when there was another phone call. It was Robert, the director from earlier.
    “Did you really tell that