There was a wet, mildew stink to the basement that made Jeremy think of lost rain jackets you find in the back of your family’s car. Add in the aroma of genetically altered tomatoes and processed cheese and you’d have the ingredients for Duncan’s tabletop board game lair AKA “no poon island.”

Jeremy, Duncan, and Tim had been playing together since they were strategically using pull-ups at sleepovers to avoid drenching their fleece lined sleeping bag in piss. It would have been easy for them to consider themselves outsiders to the rest of kids at school, but they just saw themselves as diplomatically separate. An adolescent Switzerland on the verge of finding worth through neutrality.

Duncan let of a soft snuffle as he moved his figurine. They hadn’t played that much Warhammer, but you couldn’t already tell by the detailed edges and glossy paint jobs that Duncan took it more seriously than Jeremy and Tim. Their figurines were straight from the box and painted slapdash with spray paint cans from Tim’s older brother.

Tim looked up at Duncan with a raised brow, “You sneeze like a dog.”

“What?”

“It’s not going to be nice if I explain it.”

“Don’t pretend like you’re cool after getting one dry handjob in the parking lot behind a Taco time. Just tell me.”

“It means you sneeze like a bitch,” Tim said lifting his hands in apology. The Cheeto covered tips muted the sincerity.

“It’s just allergies— you guys sneeze all the time too,” Duncan said crossing his arms.

“Not like that,” Jeremy said. He kept rifling through his notes folder. He finally plucked a crumpled piece and set on smoothing it on the table. “It might work for you though. Don’t girls like cute stuff?”

“My sneeze is not cute.”

“That sneeze is the Dr. Moreau crossbreed of a Furby and a lost chihuahua,” Tim said.

Duncan slowly raised a diplomatic middle finger “Fuck you guys. Do you want to continue this campaign or not?”

“Does Monsanto breed hybrid pig-humans?”

“Is that your version of ‘does the Pope shit in the woods?’ because I gotta say, I am not a fan,” Tim said ruffling through the Cheeto bag.

”Or…” Jeremy dipped into his backpack and pulled out a dusty box. “We could call some spirits.”

“I can’t believe you’d bring a Ouija board to my house. We are not summoning spirits. You know my mother’s policy on that!”