Laura Hulthen Thomas, from Volume 4:2

Laura Hulthen Thomas heads the undergraduate creative writing program at the University of Michigan’s Residential College. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including The Cimarron Review, Epiphany, Nimrod International Journal, Witness, and Novella-T. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and received an honorable mention in the Nimrod Literary Awards. She is a contributor to Ghost Writers: Us Haunting Them, an award-winning collection of stories by noted Michigan authors. Her short fiction collection, States of Motion, is forthcoming from Wayne State University Press in Spring 2017.

Thomas has an excerpt from her short story "Adult Crowding"— from the aforementioned forthcoming short fiction collection, States of Motion —running in the latest volume of Synesthesia. Below is a preview:

      Tammy pulled the turn indicator.  “You ever hold your breath, Mr. Jerrell?”
     “Come again?”
     “When passing a cemetery.”
     “I used to do that.”  Mr. Salisbury fidgeted with his lap belt.
     “I still do.”  Tammy caught her breath the moment the Gold Star fender drew parallel to the town cemetery’s iron fence.  Her slender fingers gripped the steering wheel.  Her knuckles, smooth, fleshy half moons, flashed white.
     “Let’s breathe through the intersection, Tammy,”  Jerrell suggested.  But Tammy held her breath through a roll past the stop sign.  Her cheeks pinked.  Her lips tensed in a pout.  Her thighs flexed under her tight jeans.  Jerrell fastened a stare on the windshield.  No future in noting stimulating changes in a little girl’s physique.  He covered the instructor brake, checked for any cars barrelling through the intersection, blessedly none.  “That’s a rolling stop, Miss.”
     Tammy breathed, a moist whoosh that blended with the air vents’ hum. “Sorry, Mr. Jerrell.”  The glove box rattled over the uneven pavement in front of the Brilliant Ford dealership.  Tammy white-knuckled the center line to avoid the broken asphalt.
     “You can’t observe traffic safely if you don’t bring the vehicle to a full stop.”
     “Especially if you don’t breathe.  Stupid little kid trick,”  Mr. Salisbury muttered.
     Tammy shot him a furious look in the mirror.  “It’s not.  The souls of the dead can ride right inside you on your air.”
     “So, I breathed.  Why don’t I have dead people in me right now?”  Mr. Salisbury said.
     “Who says you don’t?  Didn’t kids ever hold their breath in your day, Mr. Jerrell?”
     Somewhere along the way Jerrell’s youth had become your day to the young people.  “Proceed for a half mile.  No, I never did hold my breath,”  he added when Tammy glanced at him, a brief, sidelong disappointment.  He’d always felt something was dead inside of him, anyway.  And the town cemetery, beautifully manicured, populated by regular funerals and cheery blossom sprays left by the adoring living, was a damn safe sight, in his opinion.  He’d welcome in any dead so well loved.
     “Aren’t you religious?”  Mr. Salisbury piped up.
     Tammy chose to ignore Mr. Salisbury by keeping her gaze firmly on the gentle curve into downtown.  Good call.  “Start slowing down past First Lutheran,”  Jerrell instructed when the familiar gold-tipped spire glided into view.  “The posted limit there is twenty-five.  Take a left at the four corners.”
     “Your mom taught Sunday School, right?”  Mr. Salisbury had decided on a persistence he never brought to bear on mastering his driving skills.
     “So what?”  Tammy flicked him a brief, dismissive glance in the mirror.  Braked mildly at the four corners’ stoplight in the heart of town.  Lucky Drugs and the tavern stood opposite one another on Michigan Avenue.  The home decor shop where Ethel used to buy her Hull Collectibles was long gone.  So was the Kresge.  A bank and an optometrist occupied those storefronts now.  Tammy eased into the left turn lane next to a silver Volvo.  The driver, a real Ozzie Nelson type, glanced doubtfully at the lurid Gold Star decals.  The company mascot, a cartoon car with rubber balloons for wheels and a blubbery grin, filled the passenger door.  Garish funhouse mirror stars splashed the side panel.
     A real circus to announce the student drivers.
     “Left blinker, don’t forget,”  Jerrell reminded Tammy.  She dutifully pulled the turn indicator.
     “So, you believe that souls rise to Heaven.  So, in that case, there wouldn’t be any souls of the dead left on Earth to get inside you.  So, why hold your breath?”
     “Not everyone gets to Heaven, Ace.”  Jerrell couldn’t help defending Tammy’s superstition, harmless and cute.  Just the type of girlish habit that would fill her with youth and hope forever, make her a beautiful and kind woman to love.
     “So we’re talking zombie-souls here.”

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Read Thomas's remarkable piece in Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 4:2, and look for States of Motion in 2017!