The Safest Summer Camp in the World 2

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*Part 2/7 of The Safest Summer Camp in the World. If you haven’t read part 1, click HERE.

I open my eyes in bed. S stands over me.

“You were–” he coughs a few times. He holds out a spray bottle.

“For your,” he rubs his throat. Everything is a haze. I spray the bottle down my throat. The itch cools. I close my eyes. I feel S place a blanket over me.

“It often happens the first time,” he says. Then, I fall asleep. I have no dreams.

When I wake, S is gone. I step out into the main den. All the campers are mulling about. One camper is playing some Russian hip-hop on a portable speaker.

“Good morning,” one of the braver campers says to me. I wave, almost vomit–step back inside my room. After twenty minutes of swearing at a wall and coughing, someone knocks on my door. I crack it. K is standing there putting ice cream into whatever is hiding behind his beard. He takes one look at my face.

“Shit,” he says. “They didn’t tell you.”

It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer.

“Can I come in?” he asks, holding out his half-eaten ice cream as a peace offering. I step back. He doesn’t come in but instead speaks from the door.

“So–uh, what did they tell you?”

I sit down and look at my hands. They are shaking.

“Oh,” he says. “I see. Hm, okay well this camp is kind of like, spelled?”

I look up at him, “huh?”

“A bad spell.”

“A curse?”

“Ah!” he snaps his fingers. “Curse, yeah. It is cursed. No one under thirty can stay dead here.”

His eyes go wide. “You’re not thirty are you?”

“Twenty-eight,” I mumble. He sighs.

“Oh good. Well, while we are here we all have to die at least five times. And the curse will keep going. Parents send their kids here to prepare them for different deaths. So they will, well, know–you know? Not only that, but they can die as many times as they want, making us the number one safest summer camp in the world.” He swells with pride.

I try very hard to make my face show clearly that no, I do not know. He doesn’t seem to get it.

“So, you understand.”

I shake my head. “Shit, no–I’m leaving.” I stand up. My bag is still sitting on a chair, packed. He holds his ice cream out at me, like a shield.

“Ah–well, see, you already died once, and so you have to die at least four more times. If we do not all die at least five times by the end, we will not be able to leave this place.”

“Like, ever?”

He nods. “Like ever.”

He notes the look on my face. He steps closer, places a hand on my shoulder and says, “don’t worry, it will be fun. Today we go to the lake!”

I put my face in my hands.

“It will be fine, and look–it will prepare you for when the time comes. Just try to enjoy it. Set a good example for the kids? Okay? Other Americans who have come here have been pretty bad, we had to shoot one of them five times on the last day.”

I look up at him, trying to make my face do something. Instead my mouth just says “uh-huh.”

K looks guiltily at his ice cream. He sighs.

“What?”

He nudges one foot with the other. “Well–you weren’t at breakfast but we had a choking competition.”

I frown, sliding back away from him as he pulls a gun from his pocket.

“Oh come the fu–”

But he shoots me between the eyes before I can finish the sentence.

TO BE CONTINUED…

18 replies to “The Safest Summer Camp in the World 2”

    1. Yes! I hope it continues, it’s about to get a bit more into the plot. It is a bit harder writing a series so fast because I have to try and make sure everything lines up. I’m glad it’s keeping it’s steam.

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  3. What a fascinating concept! I wonder if people really would make use of it? People who have had ‘near-death’ experiences (that is to say, heart stopped, and subsequently consciousness lost) have often reported being far less frightened of death as a result.

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    1. I just thought, if this would be possible, there were surely lots of parents interessted….but just because, there are kind of parents, which are always interessted in very special things for their kids…brrrrrr….creepy!

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      1. Ugh, I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re quite right. And they’d boast about it, too. “Oh, of course we put Jonny through all the major ways of passing before he was ten years old – it’s what the psychiatrist recommended…” Ugh!

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      3. you are right, I really cannot understand, sometimes I think I do not worry/ care enough with my kids…but fortunately everything went well until today….sometimes there are some scurril happenings with this kind of parents..like birthdayparty of my daughter with an other girl when she was 7 or 8?( with kind of overorganized mother)..it was a terrible party because the other girl invited all kids of the class, my daughter invited 4? friends…overorganized mother was only interessted in moving tables, to exhibit the presents of her daughter, instead of helping with some games…..she was only interested in the number of presents…fortunately my daughter was not disappointed, that she got only 4 presents….

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  5. uhhh, really creepy!!!! A really bad dream! I thought about “Pinocchio in the city of children”…but of course the version for adults!..very good, flash!

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      1. ohhh, unfortunately I never watched lots of films. My memories are still from books and tapes in childhood. It was the only episode, which frightend a little bit. P. was angry and left his father and went on a carriage, pulled by donkeys, with a lot of other children to a “city of joy”. After a while he recognized that only party, sweets and joy is not happiness. And he is upset, as he discovered, that there are no kids older than 16 in the city, but every day there lot of are donkeys, which are deported to a circus…..this was the same feeling….holiday-fun on the first sight, but a bad dream after a while….but I think your story is built on another background…; )

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