chapters 1 2 3 4 5 and 6

That Slide Is Not Cursed

1.    These were the worst kinds of days, the ones where there was nothing to do. With good intentions, we’d put our shoes on in the morning and walk outside hoping to make the most of it; only to find ourselves a few hours later eating junk food on the curb of the Fast Mart again.

“This town blows,” said Leslie. Nobody was arguing with that. It was a sentiment we had all expressed before, oftentimes multiple times in the same day. This was life here. If you were lucky enough, you went away to college and discovered that there was more to life than a video rental store that still stocked more VHS cassettes than DVDs. If you weren’t lucky, you ended up working at that video store, or one of the other unimportant menial jobs in town. We, of course, were not so lucky. Leslie had gone to college for a year before dropping out. She never said why, nor did we ever ask. She was an “assistant manager” at Bev’s Videorama, but that really didn’t mean much when she was the only other employee besides Bev herself.

“Sometimes I think about how cool it would be if some movie came by and started shooting a zombie movie here,” said Tommy, opting not to add his own commentary on Leslie’s comment. Tommy was a few years older than Leslie and I. He claims to have once been a child actor, but we’ve never seen any proof of this. It’s a little suspicious that a former child actor would now work as a janitor at the nearby papermill, but nobody says anything.

“You think?” asks Leslie.

“Absolutely. Isn’t this exactly the kind of lifeless rundown town that a zombie invasion would look great in?”

“You watch too many movies,” I said.

“Or not enough,” Leslie retorted. “I’m so sick of zombie movies.”

“Hear me out,” Tommy said. “I had this all planned out in my mind. You know the playground down on Park Street? Well imagine kids playing there, but then all these zombies start emerging from the overgrown shrubs behind it. It’d be terrifying!”

“There’s just one problem with that idea,” I said. “There’s no way any kid would ever play on that playground.”

“Aubry is right,” Leslie said with a nod. “Kids hate that place.”

I got a secret satisfaction out of Leslie’s approval. Truth was, I looked up to her more than anyone else I knew. Sure, maybe her career path was horribly stunted as the rest of ours, but she knew things. She introduced me to new music I had never heard of before. She lent me books I couldn’t find at the library. She was like the cool older sister I never had. The fact that she was 21 now and wanted to hang out with me, a freshly graduated high school student, was like being inducted into the most elite club possible. Even if that elite club did only consist of two girls and a slightly creepy guy who mostly just hung out at the convenience store.

“I never got that,” Tommy said, finishing his hot dog. “I always thought that was a pretty nice playground. Well...it used to be before kids stopped using it and started going to the one on Church Street instead. It’s kind of rundown now, but it didn’t have to be.”

“It’s the slide,” Leslie said, nodding.

“The slide,” I said, agreeing.

“The slide?” asked Tommy. “What about a slide?”

“You really don’t know?” I asked.

“Is this like some sort of local urban legend? Because I moved here in my teens. I never had any reason to care about the playgrounds around here.”

“The slide,” Leslie stood up and stepped in front of us, as if she was going to lecture us. “If you ask any kid in town about The Slide, and they’ll know what you’re talking about. They say its cursed.”

“Cursed?” Interrupted Tommy. “Really? Come on, Leslie. You’re smarter than this. Nobody above the age of, like, 9, believes in haunted slides.”

“I’m not saying I believe, necessarily,” she continued. “But I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard when I was growing up from kids who had claimed to have gone down the slide.”

“My best friend in elementary school went down the slide,” I chimed in. “It happened to her too.”

“You saw this happen?” asked Leslie. I nodded. Leslie looked back to Tommy.

“Wait, wait, wait. What exactly happens to the kids who go down the slide?”

“Well, Aubry, what did you see?” Leslie asked me, putting me on the spot.

“She...well...wet her pants.”

There was a moment of silence. Leslie shot Tommy a satisfied look that seemed to say: Well, there you go!

“Seriously?” is all Tommy could say.

“I saw it with my own eyes,” I said.

“Kids who go down that slide have accidents,” Leslie said, spelling it out. “You piss yourself. And if you’re stupid enough to go down the slide twice in the same day...”

“That’s bullshit,” Tommy said with a laugh. “Aubry, how old were you and your friend at the time?”

“Like, 10 I guess.”

“Right. Look, girls, ten year olds piss their pants sometimes. It probably happened, coincidentally, while she was on the same slide that some other poor toddlers pissed themselves on. It’s not a cursed slide. It’s a playground toy that gets used by children who piss themselves all the time.”

“So you don’t believe?” asked Leslie.

“No. Do you?”

“I tend not to believe things I haven’t seen for myself, but I’m all for continuing the tradition of passing down a little legend for kids to believe in.”

“What about you?” Tommy asked me.

“Logic tells me that I shouldn’t believe. But I guess it’s so ingrained in my childhood memories that I’ve just accepted it as truth.”

“Come on,” Tommy said, standing up.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“We’re going to Park Street. I want to show you guys that there’s no such thing as a slide that makes you piss yourself.”

2.    It wasn’t a long walk to the Park Street Playground, though it certainly seemed a little longer today. There wasn’t much said, except the occasional laugh from Tommy followed by some comment under his breath about how naive kids are. Whenever he would make a comment like this, Leslie and I would exchange a glance and a quick smile. I liked those moments. It was like a solidarity, even if it was in pretty silly circumstances.

Finally, the playground was in sight. True, it had at one time been a pretty nice area. There were picnic benches lining the perimeter of the playground and a wide assortment of swing-sets, monkey bars and various tubes and pipes to crawl over and through. It definitely appeared to be underused, however. The grass looked it could have used a good trimming a few weeks ago, even if this was the fall. The surrounding bushes and shrubs seemed overgrown, and some of the playground equipment showed signs of rust.

For a moment, I really could imagine one of Tommy’s zombies emerging from the overgrowth, ready to eat our brains.

On the far left side of the playground, almost isolated from everything else, was a tall metal slide. It’s metal surface still gleamed in the sun, but the once dark green paint had been dulled to a muted pastel green instead, with areas where the paint was gone altogether. It certainly didn’t look any more or less cursed than any other slide I had ever seen. But it seemed telling that an otherwise decent playground was so neglected and unused. People avoided this place for some reason. Was it just the presence of a lingering urban legend?

“This is it?” asked Tommy, pointing to the slide. I nodded.

“Go ahead,” said Leslie, taunting him. “Have at it. We’ll be waiting at the bottom with a diaper for you.” She and I both laughed at this, but Tommy just rolled his eyes.

Definitely, he marched to the ladder for the slide. He took one step, then a second and then he jumped off the ladder back onto the ground.

“What’s the matter?” Leslie teased again. “Scared?”

“Not quite,” he said with a cocky smile. “I just think we could be having a little more fun with this.”

“How so?”

“Alright, so can we all agree that there shouldn’t actually be a reason that a random slide on a playground would make someone piss their pants? Logically?”

I was hesitant to answer, so I watched Leslie. She paused for a moment before nodding. “Agreed,” she said. With her in agreement, I felt pressured to do the same.

“Agreed,” I said.

“Okay,” continued Tommy. “I may be the most vocal skeptic of the three of us, but we can all agree that there shouldn’t be any reason for that slide to do...whatever the hell people says it does.”

“Go on,” said Leslie, sounding bored. “Though it just sounds like you’re trying to buy some time before you go down the slide.”

“Well, I’m just saying, maybe we should put it in the hands of fate. One of us, at random, will go down the slide.”

Leslie laughed and rolled her eyes, yet she didn’t immediately say anything.

“I think you should just go down the slide,” I said to Tommy, hoping that if I could keep the tension on Tommy, there wouldn’t be a chance that I would have to be the one to go down the slide.

Mind you, I didn’t necessarily believe in the slide’s supposed curse. Sure, I did see Misty Franklin land at the bottom of the slide with soaking wet pants on when we were ten. But I’ve had eight years to doubt myself, and I’ve long since determined that it had to have been a coincidence. And yet...there was that little tiny bit of doubt. That “what if” thought.

“Wait,” Leslie said, shrugging. “Maybe he’s right. I guess it would be fun to watch Tommy go down the slide. But then what? Either nothing...or he pisses his pants. And then we have Pissy Pants Tommy following us around for the rest of the day.”

“You don’t really think...” I started.

“No,” she said, “I don’t think it’s real. But let’s have a little fun with it. Let’s randomize our lucky...’volunteer,’” she said, air-quoting the last word with a devious smile.

“How do you want to go about doing this?” Tommy asked.

“Let’s draw straws,” Leslie said, already in the process of picking up some suitable twigs. She broke them into pieces until she had three twigs of about the same length. She then broke another piece off the third and gripped them all in her hand. “Ok, everyone grab one.”

I went first, and I plucked a stick from her clenched fist. Without having the other sticks to compare it to, I couldn’t tell if I had the short one or not. Tommy went next, carefully scrutinizing over both sticks, as if this was a critical decision, before picking a stick.

For a moment we all clutched our sticks, slightly hesitant to compare it to the others’ for fear that we’d have the short one. At last we all laughed at once, an awkward laugh. What were we thinking? This was a slide.

Tommy placed his stick down on the picnic table. Leslie was next, placing her stick next to his. They were the same size. They both looked to me, grinning. I swallowed and signed, tossing my stick down next to theirs. Sure enough, I had the short stick.

“You’ll be fine,” Leslie said, patting me on the back. Worst case scenario? I’ll give you a bath later.”

My mind was momentarily confused with whether I should blush at her comment or I should be nervous about the slide.

“Let’s get this over with,” I said.

3.    My first thought, while ascending the ladder to the top of the slide was how you didn’t see slides like this very often. Most all playgrounds now had these giant plastic things with soft edges. This metal slide seemed like a relic from a different age. Was it an age where people cared less about their kids’ safety? Or just one where kids were a little tougher?

I put these thoughts aside while sitting on the top of the slide. Now, all I could think about was the two possibilities that seemed to be laid out before me. One, I would land on the ground, get up and show everyone that my pants were dry. We’d have a laugh about it and then we’d probably go to Leslie’s brother’s apartment and watch the TV.

Or the other possibility, I got off the slide with wet pants. I could see the future, and it consisted of the other two calling me names like “Pissy Pants” or “Baby Aubry.”

It wouldn’t have been the first time I was teased for having an accident in my pants. Neither Tommy nor Leslie knew of this, but there had been a rather embarrassing incident in my junior year of high school where I had completely saturated my pants after drinking a few beers with Brad at his parent’s house while they were away. In my defence, it was my first time drinking and Brad was practically pouring them into my mouth at one point. I often worried that he would tell others about the incident, but it never came back to me, even after we broke up. Now that he had gone away to the military, it felt like that secret was locked up forever.

This, though, could be the start of a whole new incident.

“What the hell are you waiting for?” called up Leslie.

“Do you need a push?” asked Tommy.

“No, please don’t,” I said.

“She’s so cute when she’s nervous, isn’t she?” Leslie said to Tommy. Tommy only nodded. I blushed a little. I never saw myself as the type to be attracted to other girls, but there was something about Leslie that made me want to get on my hands and knees for her. Hell, if she had honestly just told me to go down the slide, I probably would have and skipped the whole stick thing.

I thought again of poor Misty Franklin. The look in her eyes when she came off that slide, water welling up in them. She later told me that her mother spanked her and threatened to put her into one of her baby sister’s diapers if she ever did that again. Needless to say, we never came back to this slide after that incident.

Another thought. What did Leslie mean when she said something about if you were stupid enough to go down the slide twice in one day? I had never heard that part of the old story before. But maybe because most kids knew better than to ever go down that slide even once.

“That’s it,” Tommy said from the ground. “I’m coming up there and I’m pushing you down.”

“No, please don’t!” I said again. “I’m going!”

And with that, I pushed myself from the top of the slide. I was coasting down the metal surface now. I forgot how much of a simplistic thrill there was in going down a slide. It was a strange experience that I almost couldn’t put into words, as it hadn’t been felt since I was a little girl.

Slowly I stopped at the end of the slide’s metal surface. I sat on the edge of the slide for a moment before standing up. I didn’t feel any different.

“Ta da!” I said, doing a little faux-curtsey.

There wasn’t any reaction from Tommy or Leslie, though. They were just staring at me. I couldn’t tell if they were just indifferent or if they were concerned about something.

Leslie’s eyes, in particular, seemed to be locked in on me. I tried to follow her line of vision and it brought me down to my waist. At about this exact moment, I suddenly became very aware of the fact that something else was happening. I was pissing myself. Without even a moment to stop it or control it, my bladder had suddenly burst and my crotch was suddenly getting saturated. In seemingly a fraction of a second, my panties were soaked through and so was the crotch of my jeans. The wetness spread down my legs, soaking the pants legs as they went.

For a few moments, nobody said anything. Nobody laughed or even smiled, I just stared at them and they just stared at me.

“Did you just...” Leslie trailed off. She couldn’t even bring herself to say it.

“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” said Tommy, seemingly in disbelief. “You had to piss already and you just wanted to freak us out. So you went down the slide and then forced yourself to piss your pants when you got off. Right?”

Except he wasn’t right at all.

“I...I had no control,” was all I could say. Just like Misty Franklin, I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes.

Suddenly, Leslie’s arms were around me. She was actually hugging me.

“I’m sorry, Aubry. I had no idea that would actually...” she stopped again, trying to find her her words. Then: “Are you okay?”

“I pissed my pants,” is all I could say through the tears. “I feel like a toddler!”

4.    We were all sitting at one of the picnic tables now, thinking about what to do next. I made it clear that I didn’t want to have to walk all the way home in obviously pissed in pants. So for now, I was there on the bench, sitting in the pissy pants. They were getting clammy and cool and were far from comfortable. Leslie had been doing her best to be supportive, while Tommy didn’t seem to have much to say.

Once or twice he left the picnic bench to investigate the slide. He’d feel the surface of it or search around for something, anything, that would give away the reason why it would do that to somebody, but he couldn’t find anything.

“It’s a psychological thing,” he finally said, sounding like he was just hit with this epiphany. “Maybe there were a bunch of kids who, you know, had an accident while playing around this slide, right? And so this story starts going around that when you use this slide you wet your pants. And that story becomes so ingrained in the culture of the kids around here that whenever someone goes down the slide now it, like, sets off this psychological trigger that you are SUPPOSED to piss your pants on this slide.”

“That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said,” Leslie said bluntly. “And, frankly, it doesn’t help us much.”

He signed and threw his hands up in the air, as if he was completely exasperated.

“Okay, so what are we doing?”

“I need some pants,” I chirped.

“She does,” Leslie said with a nod in Tommy’s direction.

“Ok...and so what does that have to do with me?”

“Go get her some!”

“Why me? You’re a girl! You go get her some pants. Why do you get to stay here but I have to go looking for pants?”

“Because I want to make sure Aubry’s okay.” For as embarassed and humiliated as I felt in the moment for having pissed pants, there was something really warming and soothing about hearing her say that about me. I wanted that too. I wanted her to comfort me.

“Please, Tommy,” I said. “Can you please grab some pants for me?”

He sighed, shaking his head.

“Ok, fine. Where can I get you some pants?”

“Just go to my mom’s house and go to my room,” Leslie said, slightly impatiently. “My pants will be close enough to her size. Grab a pair and come back.”

“But what if your Mom’s home? And I supposed to just be like, ‘Oh, hi Mrs. Donaldson, just borrowing a pair of your daughter’s pants!’?”

“She’s at work, nimrod. Just go! Hurry up.”

Tommy shook his head in frustration again and wandered off in the direction of Leslie’s house. A minute or two passed as we watched him walk down the street before Leslie turned to me again.

“Are you ok?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, blushing. “Just a little embarrassed. I can’t believe it worked. I mean...that’s what happened, right? The slide worked?”

“I think so,” she said solemnly. “That’s what it looked like.”

We didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Finally, I decided that I might as well take the opportunity to ask one of my previous questions from when I was on the slide.

“What did you mean before?”

“What do you mean?” she replied.

“Before when we were at the Fast Mart. You said that someone would be stupid to go down the slide twice in one day.”

“Well, yeah, do you know that part of the legend?”

“I don’t,” I said. And honestly, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know.

“So, yeah, you go down the slide and you piss your pants, right? But someone told me once that if you went down the slide for a second time in the same day that you would...like..” she trailed off again, seeming to imply that I’d get where she was going with this. Except that I didn’t.

“...wet yourself again?” I suggested. I really wasn’t sure what else it could be.

“No, Aubry. Think about it. You have an accident in your pants the first time you go down the slide. And, well, you have an accident the second time you go down it, supposedly. But its worse because it’s...a different kind of accident.”

Suddenly I got where she was going with this. I blushed again, for no other reason than just the thought of that happening was too much for me to handle.

“Where did you hear that?” I asked.

“It’s a story. It goes around. I guess its possible that the second part of the story got lost over time. I am a few years older than you. I mean, the threat of pissing yourself is probably enough to stop a kid from using the slide.”

“You’d think so,” I said, looking down at my damp pants.

5.    Another ten minutes had passed and Tommy still hadn’t returned. My pants were getting a little more uncomfortable, but at least Leslie was being good company, talking to me about things and distracting me from my accident. From down the street, I could see someone else walking towards us.

“Is that Tommy?” I asked, desperately.

“Nope.”

It wasn’t Tommy. It was a middle-aged woman carrying a bag of groceries. As she got closer, I shifted myself closer to the table as to hide my lap and my soaked pants. I didn’t think she’d notice, but just the fact that someone would be walking that close to me in this situation made me nervous.

“Hi girls,” she said with a jovial smile as she got near. “A little old to be playing on the playground, don’t you think?”

“We’re just waiting for a friend,” Leslie said, not seeming too eager to chat with the stranger.

“Just stay away from that slide. You know what they say...” She walked past us, and continued down the street, further and further away from the playground. Leslie and I exchanged glances.

“I wonder if she has any idea just how real it is,” I said.

“I’d like to push her down the slide,” Leslie said. “I’d show her.”

“Ugh, that stupid slide,” I moaned. “I can’t believe this. I pissed myself.”

“It’s not that bad,” Leslie said.

“Easy for you to say. I feel so embarrassed. I’m like a big baby.”

“It’s...kind of neat,” Leslie said in a hushed tone, leaning forward over the table.

“You’re just saying that,” I said, blushing a little. I couldn’t take it when Leslie said things like this to me. Not in a negative way or anything, she just had this way of making my heart race without intending to. Though, maybe she did actually intend for that.

“I’m not,” she said softly. I was hoping she’d elaborate on it, but she stopped herself. I was almost considering asking her myself to elaborate, but that just seemed desperate.

It was strange, because I had a lot of trouble determining the origin of my feelings for Leslie. I had always identified as being straight, so saying that I had a sexual attraction of any sort for Leslie was difficult. My adoration of her seemed rooted in just a deep longing to actually be her, but sometimes there was definitely this feeling of something more that I couldn’t put into words. Hearing her softly tell me how she felt about my wet pants sent a tingle down my spine that only further complicated my thoughts.

We sat in silence for a few more minutes, occasionally looking up and down the street for a sign of Tommy, though there wasn’t one. Occasionally my eyes would catch the slide and I would shudder. How could a stupid slide cause this sort of drama. I wanted to kick it, or knock it over.

And then part of me wanted to climb it again. I wanted to show that slide, more than anything, that I was the only one who had control of my body. There was no magic, no voodoo, no wacky curse. There was a metal slide and a healthy young woman with no history of having accidents in her pants. More than anything I wanted to conquer that damn slide.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Leslie, likely noticing the focused anger on my face.

“I’m just thinking about that damn slide. I feel like that shouldn’t have happened. It had to have been some sort of fluke, you know?”

“You’re not thinking about going down the slide again, are you?” Leslie said in a tone that seemed unclear in whether it was one of concern...or intrigue.

“I just...that shouldn’t have happened. I’m stronger than a slide!” I stammered.

“I don’t know,” Leslie said. “You know what I said about the second time you go down the slide...”

“Right, but...” I exhaled and pouted. She was right - curse or no curse, it seemed silly to even tempt fate like that.

“I mean...in the interest of science...there’s one thing we could do.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“I mean, it wouldn’t stop anything from happening if something was going to...you know...happen,” Leslie said, biting her lip. “But, like, maybe we wouldn’t need to ruin any more pants.”

“What are suggesting?” I asked, completely unsure of what she was getting at.

“Diapers,” she said. I blushed, and I could’ve sworn I saw the smallest of smiles peaking out from her the corner of her mouth.

6.    I didn’t say anything at first. I couldn’t even stand to look at her, as I was blushing so hard.

“What?” asked Leslie. “Do you like that idea or not?”

“I don’t know about that one,” I said, trying to play it cool. Never in my post-toddler life had the thought or concept of wearing diapers again ever crossed my mind. I didn’t really have any reaction to it one way or another. It just seemed like something so foreign that my brain couldn’t fully grasp it.

There was one thing I knew about it, though, and that was that it seemed excruciatingly humiliating. I felt some phantom wave of anxious pain roll through my body as I pictured myself wearing oversized diapers as I slid down the slide while Leslie watched.

“I was just kidding,” Leslie said in a breezy sort of way. “You should’ve seen the look on your face, though. You would’ve thought I suggested that we slap the Pope in the face.”

“Yeah, well, it was just a weird idea, that’s all.” I was mostly relieved that she was just kidding. Mostly. There was a small part of me that didn’t seem quite ready to let go of this idea. I looked over to the slide again. Diapers...the slide...I felt like there was some sort of opportunity here that my curiosity wouldn’t allow me to just drop. “Actually...”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe that’s not a bad idea,” I said. I couldn’t believe the words were coming out of my own mouth.

“What? You’d willingly wear diapers and go down the slide again? I was just kidding, Aubry. You don’t have to do that.”

“No,” I said, trying to disguise my own personal interest, “I just mean...for Tommy. Like, maybe we could convince him to wear them or something.”

“You think he’d do that?”

“Maybe?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Leslie turned back to the slide for a moment, looking at it. Then she looked back down the street. Still no sign of Tommy returning with a pair of her pants yet. Suddenly, it was almost like I could see a light bulb going off above her head. Her mouth turned into a twisted smile and I could see a glint of perverse pleasure in her eyes. I loved that look about her.

“I bet we could convince Tommy to do it,” she said.

“How so?”

“Do you know how badly he wants to get into our pants?”

“What?” I never really thought about that before. Tommy was just Tommy, some sort of platonic entity who seemed to wander around with us and complain about things.

“Oh, come on. He’s just some pervey guy who probably thinks he’s hit the jackpot in that he can hang out with two younger females. He’s banking on the right situation to come up where we’ll suddenly come on to him or something.”

“You really think so?” I supposed it was true, but I never thought of him that way.

“Aubry, sometimes you’re just too cute with your accepting nature.” She sighed and I blushed a little. “Trust me. Pay attention to his eyes sometime. You’ll see that they’re never focused on your face. It’ll be on one of chests, or our ass.”

“So then what are you proposing,” I said, almost hesitant to ask what she had in mind. “Because I don’t want to...”

“No no, silly. I’m not saying we actually have to, like, do anything to him. We just...y’know...tell him we will.”

“What would we tell him?”

“There are men out there who’ll do awfully silly things if they think they’re going to get some sexual favors out of it, Aubry. Tommy is one of those guys. We don’t have to follow through with anything, you know. We just insinuate that if he does as we ask, we might just give him what he wants from us.”

“And what do you think we could get him to do?”

“I bet we could make Tommy our guinea pig, don’t you? How many times do you think we could get him to go down that slide if he thought he was going to get lucky?”

I shrugged, unsure of what to say. This level of deception, especially with something as surreal as this slide seemed dangerous to me. At the same time, I was intrigued. And I liked seeing Leslie take control. I found myself nodding in agreement.

Leslie pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and hit a few buttons. She placed the cell phone on the table, with the speakerphone option turned on. It rang once, then twice and then Tommy picked up.

“Yeah?” asked Tommy, sounding out of breath.

“Where are you Tommy?” asked Leslie.

“I’m on my way. I got the pants for Aubry.”

“Actually,” Leslie said with a grin as she looked to me and winked. “We were wondering if you might be able to stop at the store for us.”

“I...I guess I could, yeah. Why? What do you need?”

“Well, that depends, Tommy. We have a proposition for you...”