Come Join us at the Slumber Party Behind John Wayne Gacy’s Lot

When 3:30 AM arrived in red on the alarm clock radio, we cast off our Care Bear sleeping bags and snuck out of the Benedetto’s basement through the garden overgrown with spiny cucumbers and Roma tomatoes. We learned over the year of thirteenth birthdays that we were sick of each others’ truths. This was our age of dares.

The empty lot was cursed by the kids whose dares came before us. 666, they spray-painted along the plastic linked through the fence. Satan. Fuck. We lined up along the chain link fence, and because no one wanted to go first, we’d all go together on the count of three. At one we whimpered; at two, we laughed, and by three we squealed because we could, because our fears were free, unconstrained by Adam’s apple.

Then we ran. We ran because if our shoes lingered on the ground too long, we’d be pulled under, beneath the milkweed and hyssop. And find what? Gregory’s index finger? Tommy’s wallet? A curl from the head of Body Number 26? The nightly news stopped chanting their names years ago.

At school, we learned God had a thing for taking away sons. We no longer felt our own guardian angels hovering over us. They shed their pink cloaks like uterine lining, so we lined our eyes in teal for protection instead.

We didn’t know what waited on the other side of the yard, that we’d forget each other’s last names, that our moms would sicken, that our infants would not latch, that we’d commute to our careers. We didn’t know to fear those things, so we ran to them and thought of those boys underfoot who could not.

Next year, there will be a brand new house on this lot. Larger and nicer than the rest of ours. When the lake-effect snow falls next winter, it will stick everywhere but the heated driveway. Our parents will look upon it with awe. Who could have imagined such a thing was possible in this neighborhood?

BIO: M. Ursula Chmiel is a lactose-intolerant Aquarius obsessed with her little yappy dogs and cozy coloring books. She works as a writer, researcher, and documentarian in the Washington DC area. Her short stories have appeared in Bull Lit Mag, Maudlin House, The Literary Hatchet, and Flash Fiction Magazine. You can read more at marjee.org or follow her on Instagram and Bluesky @marjeec