The blender whirred and buzzed loudly. Laura turned her head and torso away from it, even as her finger stayed firmly on the button that made it work. It was an old machine, one of those that had been built to last rather than to break, and she’d gotten it when she and her sister moved their mother to the nursing home and divided the stuff in their childhood home between them. Laura had also taken the old rug that had kept the parlor permanently dusty and the painting her father had produced in his youth before giving up on art and becoming a pawnbroker.

She took her finger off the button and felt her headache subside a little with the end of the horrible noise. Lifting the lid, she looked in at the gooey, sticky mess and sniffed deeply. Chocolate, brown sugar, peanut butter and half a gallon of soy milk. Her friends said it tasted awful, but the invented drink was Laura’s favorite. Sometimes she added vodka and made it as her own personal cocktail when she had friends over for dinner and drinks.

Laura poured herself some of the thick drink and put the glass container with the rest of it into the fridge to cool. She dunked one of the thick crazy-straws that she collected into it and sipped – it was a struggle, which was part of the fun – as she took it into her writing room.

She sat down at her typewriter. She had a laptop beside it, but she used it only to copy the typewritten pages, editing them along the way. Her first drafts she wrote exclusively on the clunky old machine. She had a thing for the antique and outdated. Anything that seemed to reflect the past drew her attention immediately. In college, she’d considered becoming an archaeologist for a while before inevitably declaring an English major.

Taking another long sip, Laura began to type.