Alumna Elisabeth Hamilton’s (fiction, ’13) short story, “Loafed,” appears online, in five parts, at Five Chapters. Read Part One here:
We’ve got a bag of Wonder Bread in the backseat. It’s hot in the car with the vents blasting and I keep turning to check if the plastic of the bread bag is melting, fusing with the Peace Train’s blue vinyl upholstery. I like this car. It’s got window cranks and exactly one temperature option and you never have to worry about whether pressing a button will cause the car to back up, or sound its alarm, or ask you intimidating and direct questions about your mileage. It doesn’t confuse you with icons that hint at window washing and instead trigger emergency wheel locking systems. If you want to defrost the windows, you rub them with your sleeve. I long for that kind of simplicity.
