Deadass
We weren’t close. Just basement cousins. Shared trauma, seasonal allergies, and a group text nobody knows how to leave. Holiday filler. Whispered commentary while the adults got loud in that Midwestern way where you couldn’t tell if someone was drunk or dying. We used to mimic their laughter until we choked. Trying to make sure we didn’t end up like them.
Now we mostly existed in a group chat. It just circled. Tornado updates, expired memes, a long-running joke about a rogue Hi-C Ecto Cooler someone found in the garage fridge one Christmas Eve. No one drank it. Then someone did. We’ve talked about it for years like it meant something. Maybe it did. Maybe we just needed something dumb to keep us orbiting each other.
The tornado texts always came through first. Sirens blaring two towns over and suddenly we were alive again, dropping grainy photos of green skies and saying things like “it’s giving Dorothy.” Sophie once said, “Not to jinx it, but I’ve been underwhelmed by the storms lately,” like she was daring the sky to take it personally. Brennan added, “We’re out getting Culver’s right now in true Midwestern fashion.” No one actually went into the basement until the wind started throwing lawn chairs. Midwest logic. You wait until the sky bruises. Someone always cracked a joke. And every time, we laughed. Not because it was funny, but because it meant we still recognized each other. Even if we hadn’t talked in months.
This is what we mean when we say cousin.
Sometimes I think we were all waiting for something terrible to happen just so we could feel close again. Like grief was the only group project we had the energy for.
Maybe we all wanted a crisis. A reason to check in without it being weird.
Sometimes I fantasize about being mildly injured during a tornado, like nothing fatal, just enough for attention and a Vicodin. I’ve never told anyone that.
If this is the part where you stop reading, I get it. I wouldn’t believe me either.
One time Claire tried to send something heartfelt and got ghosted by a SpongeBob meme. That felt right too.
Somewhere between a siren warning and a dust storm TikTok, someone said we should start a new tradition. Cousin movie nights. No spouses. No kids. No parents. Just us. Try to stitch something back together before it rotted completely. I probably suggested it. Feels like something I’d say when I’m spiraling about legacy and also craving Totino’s Pizza Rolls. Or because I saw a tweet that said “nostalgia is just grief with better lighting.” I screenshotted it, stared at it too long, then told myself it wasn’t about me. But it was. Obviously it was. Also, I was three drinks deep and thought I could manifest forgiveness by hitting ‘send.’
Mattie hosted the first one. Technically his name was Matthew, but we called him Mattie because he never escaped the energy of a kid who threw up on the bus once and then acted like it gave him credibility. Gen X in the way that meant he still had a laserdisc player and used the word mixtape unironically. He wore Slayer shirts like they were legal documents and lived in the same house he grew up in. You could still smell the Mountain Dew Code Red in the carpet. On the coffee table sat a stubby black pillar candle, half-burned and crusted with wax that looked like hardened lava, smelling faintly of patchouli and spilled beer. He brought a cooler of beer no one asked for and tripped over a folding chair while trying to arrange it like we were guests on a daytime talk show. “Ambiance,” he said. “Vibe or whatever.”
Claire held up a DVD. “Return of the Living Dead. Said it felt right.”
Brennan asked why. She shrugged. “Because we’re all back. Sort of.”
Mattie said it felt honest. Nobody survives. Nobody learns. Just a bunch of weirdos rotting together.
The case hit the table. Eli nodded. Didn’t speak. Just pulled his hoodie over his head and let his phone light his face like a soft blue ghost.
Mattie cracked a beer. Brennan asked if anyone remembered the graveyard scene. Claire did. So did I. Sophie pretended not to hear.
The movie started. Trash hadn’t danced yet. No one said anything. Claire picked at a loose thread on the couch like she was unspooling herself on purpose. I kept waiting for the room to feel normal. It didn’t. It felt like we were all pretending to be versions of people who still hung out.
Claire added, “Sometimes I think I remember us wrong. Like I made it up.”
No one responded at first. Brennan scratched his arm like he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the shape of it. Then he posted a meme of a possum screaming into a bag of Doritos. That counted.
Mattie didn’t look up. “I found Dad’s old watch in the crawlspace last week. Still ticking. I didn’t even know it was battery-powered.”
We weren’t a close family. But this was worse. Like we’d all wandered into different timelines and occasionally waved across the glitch. Half-finished conversations. Meme replies instead of real ones. Claire called it cousin triage. A once-a-month attempt to remember how to be around each other.
Not family. Not friends. Just fragments. Echoes from a group text that hadn’t been updated in years.
This is what we mean when we say cousin.
Cousin logic is cult logic. You don’t explain it. You just follow the rules and act like they’ve always existed.
I used to narrate our home movies. The cousin with the camcorder. That’s probably why they let me do the texting now.
I used to rewind things just to hear the sounds in reverse. Thought I could find meaning that way. I still think that sometimes.
Sometimes I narrate things in my head like I’m pitching the moment to a ghost who never liked me. Or an ex who never blocked me. Depends on the mood.
I once told Sophie I thought the devil lived in the Redbox by the Walgreens. She said, “Yeah, that tracks.” I told her every DVD from there came pre-scratched like someone had tried carving Bible verses with a house key. Or maybe just their ex’s initials next to the number 666. I wasn’t even joking. That’s the part that bothered her.
The DVD buzzed its grainy synth menu loop. Brennan leaned close to Claire and whispered something that made her half-smile like her mouth didn’t want to commit. Eli kept texting. Mattie stared at family photos like he was waiting to recognize someone. Sophie watched the room like she was preparing to report on it later.
She wasn’t watching the board. She wasn’t watching the movie either. She was watching us. Eyes scanning like she was counting. Not out of curiosity. More like a quiet inventory.
The house smelled like Pine-Sol and regrets. We used to hunt for Easter eggs here. Now we sat in the same places we did as kids. Same snacks, new disappointments.
Mattie quoted something from an old Clerks cartoon. Claire laughed. No one else got it. I didn’t speak Gen Z and I didn’t hoard laserdiscs. Whatever language I used, it was already outdated.
Sophie filmed Claire with a glitch filter and a demon emoji. “Basement vibes,” she said like it was a diagnosis.
No one responded.
Eli muttered, “Deadass.” He said it like a joke. No one laughed.
Deadass. A word that means nothing and everything. Gen Z’s way of swearing on a God they ghosted. A confession disguised as a punchline. A shrug that leaves a bruise.
Deadass.
There was a silence after Eli said it. The kind that felt like someone just knocked over a memory.
That’s what we said instead of help.
That was the thing with Gen Z. Everything meant something and nothing at the same time. Sophie acted like nothing mattered but wouldn’t eat the pizza unless the lid stayed closed. Said it was cursed if the steam hit air before the first slice. She had this whole thing about rituals being real if you laughed while doing them. Said ghosts weren’t real but she wasn’t about to bring demons into this house.
The DVD menu looped again. The sound glitched for a second. It felt like we’d been sitting in that room for hours even though Trash still hadn’t danced.
Mattie bent over the coffee table, rifled through a box of matches, and struck one sharp against the side. He held the tiny flame to the crusted wick of the stubby black pillar and watched as the glow crept back along the wax-dripped top. For a moment the carpet’s faint Mountain Dew Code Red stain glowed in its light, and he just stared, as if the flame still owed him something.
“Let’s do a séance,” he said, too casually.
I shrugged. “You know I’m in.”
Eli lit up. “I’m taking Latin. I could read the invocation. We should blast Iron Maiden while we do it.”
“Latin’s not dead,” he said. “It’s just lurking in the background of Western civ.”
“Of course you are,” Sophie said. “You’re not bringing demons back to this house.”
“It’s for school.”
“I don’t care if it’s for Pope Francis. I’m not getting haunted because you want to flex your elective.”
Sophie glanced at the board. “Midwestern girls don’t get possessed. They get blamed.”
No one answered.
Mattie blew out the candle. Eli tapped his phone like it had a pulse. Brennan offered to reheat the popcorn, but no one was hungry. Sophie deadass refused to say goodbye when she left. Said it felt like a jinx. The movie started without us.
I realize none of this is impressive. You’re probably waiting for the part where we all get dragged to hell. Or at least one cousin coughs up blood. But honestly, it was just weird. Like someone had queued us up for a punchline that never landed.
If you’re still here, I’d apologize for dragging you into cousin horror, but we both made choices. Don’t pretend this wasn’t on you too.
That’s where the board was, wedged half-open between a warped VHS of The Craft and a box of Scattergories. The planchette looked like someone tried to wipe it down but stopped halfway. Like it had been opened recently. Or never really closed.
Mattie kept things. Not because they meant anything. Just because throwing them away felt too final. Like if he got rid of something, he might disappear with it. There was a bag of bottle caps labeled “good ones.” A Mountain Dew can with a melted plastic army man jammed inside. Burned CDs with Sharpie names like “Sad 2007” and “Driving 2 Dad’s.”
We never said his name. Just paused around it like saying it might let something else speak too. The cousin we stopped mentioning. The one who used to come to everything until he didn’t.
Sophie said he bled on the hoodie during a tornado once. We didn’t ask which tornado. We didn’t ask which hoodie. We just nodded like we remembered, like it made sense. Like we weren’t all quietly counting who was still here.
Eli pulled out his phone and showed us a meme. It was from the cousin who’s gone. Timestamped. We didn’t ask how that was possible. We just stared. Pretended not to notice it was sent three minutes ago.
The board moved once. Just a twitch. No one touched it. I checked the vents. No air. Sophie filmed it and added a slow zoom. Claire said it was probably from the popcorn. But the popcorn was cold.
Claire smelled like vanilla body spray. The kind from Walgreens that somehow outlasts memory, like it got sprayed once in 2007 and decided to haunt the air forever out of spite. For a second, I thought she was gone too. Then she laughed at something no one said.
Mattie had his head in his hands. Brennan said, “Should we just turn it off?” No one answered.
I kept watching the static on the screen. Not because I thought something would happen. Just because I didn’t want to be the one who looked away first.
If anyone ever asks, tell them we were laughing. Tell them we were young. Tell them we didn’t mean to open it. That the movie just kept playing, even when the room didn’t.
* This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are producs of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
