A Handful of Screw Auger Pills (The Big Nothing Part 11)

''My tummy was making the rumblies that only hands could satisfy'' said The Inch as we drove past Metwein (and tire remnants strewn acorss the highway) until we hit a town called Clutier; fifty five minutes outside of Cedar Rapids.

We didn't mean to go past the town until I heard that it had an abandoned public school but I didn't realize just how public until we drove into town. It wasn't bigger than a hundred people but it still seemed busy compared to all the other towns; old women walked around with push mowers across their lawns as no one paid attention to us except one woman who just gawked.

The school was right in the middle of the town and just outside the main street and a few very small businesses. We parked right next to it, in the middle of broad daylight, walked through someone's yard (as the owner drove past us in a golf cart), and we were just outside a smashed in door that lead inside. 

It was too easy.

The school was coated in graffiti (not the artistic kind), most of the windows were either broken, open, or boarded up; and the inside blasted you with wafts of a musty smell. We were in a small space that had two sewer openings that seemed to have housed paint supplies but had since flooded at some point because there was, at least, five feet of green water down there. ''Could you imagine getting a toilet bowl dropped on top of your head?'' said The Inch as he surveyed a set of metal stairs that wobbled each time he took a step up. 

I was spooked and The Inch, who must of been momentarily possessed by the demons inside the school, kept trying to scheme a way to toss a brick through an unbroken window or chuck a large rock through a boarded up window (which fell right on his foot); 'How about break some glass for fun?....(''No, they already did a number at this place anyway'' I said)...not even a brick, though?...(''No'')...I feel like I have to get this place back for what it just did to me'' said The Inch.

I, then, offered that we try finding the city hall and try getting official permission. City Hall ended up being a City Clerk's office that had the daily hours of 7:40am - 11:40am and I never did hear anything back when I emailed the city hall online.

Main street consisted of a bank, library, a diner, and abandoned buildings (one of which was covered in Trump - Pence 2020 and Infowars signs).

Part Two: 

Public Deer Shooting

''I heard a baby cry" said The Jaffer, ''babyland?'' asked The Inch. Tones of guitar filled the silence in the car. It eased slowly around the graveyard, surrounded by weeping willows and broken headstones, I looked out the passenger side window to the field around the graveyard. It's burnt grass swaying.

We were outside of Vinton, on the lead of The Jaffer, who was in the passenger seat and The Inch at the wheel. The day seemed lazy; cars drifted up and down the small streets of Vinton. We wandered around until we hit a sharp curve that led us under a stone bridge covered with graffiti. I could only hear the roar of the engine. All the colors of the trees around the dirt road glowed green in the sun.

We drove into town until we ended up at a brick railroad station. The air was warm and quiet. Nobody was outside except some construction workers in the distance who were up on scaffolding around some tall mansion looking building. The Inch eyed the half of a cheeseburger that laid on a bench.

Down the road, alongside the train tracks was a small decrepit bridge; it hung low over a small street and the edges were crumbling away. A rusty steel door led inside what must of been a maintenance area or something. It looked more bunker like than anything.

The small walls around it were either collapsing out or missing completely. The place was apparently popular for drug use or after prom fornication; blankets, prom clothes, and broken booze bottles were everywhere on piles of rock that collapsed in from the walls.

At the end of the small passageway, a chain link fence was twisted around an entrance that seemed to go further in but it was almost completely filled in with rubble.

Someone spray painted ''get out'' in lime green on the other side of the steel door. ''As we walk further and further in, you can feel the cuncer seep in'' said The Inch as he wandered around the rubble, pointing out the phrases in graffiti, and pissed on a metal bed frame. All the while, strange music played in the distance. It was almost like the music of an ice cream truck. It seemed like it was coming from somewhere in town. It just hung over the warm silence broken only by the sound of our shoes over the broken glass.

Almost outside of town, The Jaffer had led us to an abandoned steam plant that was almost hidden in between some houses and the back of a car dealership. We parked in front of a small trail that led to an abandoned house. The trees were too thick to wander in but the small land around the steam plant was open and freshly mowed.

It was a large brick building. The windows were either blasted out or boarded up. Some of the wall had collapsed and had been boarded up also. We could see through the windows that the plant was about 30 feet deep. Rusty frames of what must of been scaffolding was scattered in broken sections on eye level but the ground level looked bare and spacious. A small tree was growing in a corner and concrete door frames led to other parts of the building that we couldn't see.

The Jaffer told us that you used to be able to get down there from the holes in the wall and be led into tunnel passages that that took you even more deep down below. He walked behind the building and tried kicking in a small weak point of the wall, hidden behind large wooden beams, but was never successful. There were train tracks behind the building that must of dropped off supplies to the plant, a thin steel roof acted like a depot over a very small loading dock, large manholes (10 feet deep) were filled with dirt and trash. The front was chained up and by looking at the newly placed garage door besides it, we didn't take the chance, and left.

Part Three: 

Overdose

Days passed, summer was ending, and I didn't feel like the whole thing had been successful. I kept thinking about that school in Clutier. I was going over the events in my head over and over again and everytime it seemed like it was just too easy. It didn't feel right.

After hours of brainstorming and debate at three in the morning, we had decided that it was all or nothing. We'd wait until the hour before dawn and drive up there to explore the place under the small light of sunrise. The hour long drive was tense and we were completely quiet for the whole ride.

It felt surreal when we were coming up on the small town; secluded around rows of corn but not too far away from the nearby highway. The school looked eerie in the morning light but we were ready. We jumped out and walked quickly to the back of the school. The Inch and The Jaffer had gas masks on. I eyed the smashed in door. I breathed in deeply. I could smell the must and decay from there. It looked like a small drop, so I slid across the door with my boots to the ground which was squishy from mold and water damage. I looked at the door and the floor had been caving from underneath the slanted in door.

The Jaffer vaulted over the door and onto the ground. The Inch poked the door with his foot, he hesitated, and kicked it real hard to reveal that the door was almost hollow except for styrofoam inside it and he laughed and we told him to keep watch outside.

The floor was covered in pieces of smashed tile and wood. The smell of must and asbestos hit in successive waves. There were holes in the floor where you could see that dropped down about 10 feet. 

We slowly walked forward, in fear of the floor giving out under our weight, to a small staircase that went slightly upwards and into the main corridor of the first floor. Pieces of insulation were hanging out of the walls and the ceiling. Bare electric wiring and light fixtures hung from the ceiling to the ground in a spiderweb which we maneuvered around. We felt pressed for time. With The Jaffer behind me, I was just waiting for some junkie to come screaming down the destroyed hallway, naked, and with the look of animalistic aggression deep in his eyes but he never did. So we continued.

I stood in the middle of the first floor and looked around. The floor in front of me had broken doors thrown to their sides, two large classrooms had their walls stripped to the beams and charred by fire. I could see the main doors behind me; light peered in from the outside. Right by the doors was a staircase that led to a second floor and another one beneath it that led the basement. We decided to keep exploring the first floor.

Going into some rooms besides the front door, we could see outside the windows that we were looking into earlier, to my left was a destroyed bathroom with the bowl filled with green spew that almost like some necromancer brew. Piles of insulation and wooden beams from the wall lay in small piles around the room.

It was then we heard someone either yelling or talking. I couldn't figure it out. The Jaffer got real quiet and we prepared to fight either the necromancer's creation or a small group of junkies. I walked slow by the front windows and glanced out. A small, brown, car was coming slowly up the main road. Some guy was yelling towards us in the driver's seat. I ignored it and quickly walked out of sight.

We walked over to the other side of the first floor. The hallway led us to another classroom that had a fairly new exit door on one side. Next to it was smashed in light fixture and an empty bookcase. Most of the rooms looked the same and most were filled with more rubble than the last so we decided to finally go upstairs.

The staircase leading up was a metal hazard that oozed of rust stains and the paint on the walls were long gone; showing the brick behind it. We cautiously approached the top of the stairs, ''Inch?!'' cried The Jaffer. No response. ''Should we do it?..or go back?''. I didn't hesitate.

I slowly walked up there, feeling like the ground would disappear any minute, and we could see the morning light washing in through the windows. Lighting up the empty hallways of the second floor. We needed to find The Inch.

I walked into a destroyed classroom in front of the staircase, slowly feeling my way around, until I came to the back windows where I could look for The Inch down where we had left him. I didn't see anything. The door that led to the rickety staircase outside was boarded up. I called out until he came out of a bush from pissing and waved.

I exhaled and turned around. The Jaffer was walking around the classroom and into a room that was connected to the classroom. Moss was growing like grass on the ground. He was getting antsy but I convinced him to keep with it.

We walked out into the hallway, we passed an empty nurse station that had linen curtains flapping in the wind. Besides that room was a bathroom completely torn up with the twisted metal of rusty stalls and sinks dashed onto the ground. The metal was just in heaps. I looked up at the ceiling in the hallway and could see holes that showed the clear sky above. A wooden fire escape led up to the roof but the ladder was long gone and the wood almost looked like wet driftwood.

We felt then was the time to leave, we had seen 90% of the place and that was good enough. We quickly walked down the two staircases and pushed up against the door frame around the styrofoam door, to lift us up outside.

Outside, we laughed and congratulated each other on a successful mission. On our way back to the car, the brown car from before was parked in front of ours; an old guy squawking at us from the driver's seat. The Jaffer walked up to his car window and talked to him, he was trying to warn us that the guy who lives behind the school (and who was driving that golf cart the first time we visited) would sue us if he saw us. We thanked him and he drove off. Over our heads, came the roar of a small engine plane that swooped so low to the ground that I braced for another Pearl Harbor.

''Yea, it sounds like the Vietnamese are trying to nade us'' said The Inch as he started up The Inchmobile II; the sounds of the plane could be heard over the engine. I exhaled deeply and we drove back to Cedar Rapids.

Breakfast On The Hills (The Big Nothing Part 10)

''So where you guys headed?'' said Mike Breitbach; as he took our order at eight in the morning. We sat at a small table inside the Breitbach's Country Dining restaurant in Balltown, Iowa; glasses of fresh orange juice and nice, thick, coffee with cream by our side.

Just down the road was an amazing view of the Mississippi Valley; where we sat, breathed in the morning air, and waited for the place to open. At eight, we walked up the road and into the rather large restaurant on a small hill of the town. Inside, we stood awkwardly, three guys sat at a huge bar, reading newspapers, as one of them noticed us and ushered us into the back. Looking around, as we walked through the place, the atmosphere was amazing; the spacious dining halls adorned with local memorabilia of both the surrounding area and the restaurant itself; which has stood since 1852 and burned down twice in less than a year. 

''Umm, we're on a road trip, to find, like, um, abandoned ghost towns, in Iowa (Mr Breitbach chuckles) I'm writing a novel about it (''Really?'' says Mr Breitbach)'' I said as he gave us more cream and sugar for our coffee. Sinatra, and others of likewise genre, played in the background as we sipped our coffee. I had a ham and cheese omelet (with the works) as The Inch had a skillet. Bike riders camped outside on the patio, and wandered around but, other than that, it was only the kitchen and music that made any noise. The omelet tasted great along the thick slices of toast; sitting at the same restaurant where Jesse James sat once and owned by six generations of Breitbachs. It was very strange, to shake hands with a living embodiment of entire family legacy. It was all around as you felt the curious exchange of history in the way he shook your hand.

Part Two: Of All Places

The ensuing day was hot, the air wasn't moving much, and the land was dry as I stood over the town of Elkport....or what's left of it. Other than a small valley (that was flooded fifteen years ago), a small community center, two churches, a graveyard, and an incline with abandoned houses; that was about it. 

I walked down to the bottom of the incline to inspect the abandoned properties. The first was a wooden blacksmith shop that was built on top of a crippled concrete foundation. The bottom windows were busted but you could see downstairs where a bunch of junk was rotting. Cars slowly went up the incline, off the nearby highway, and paid no attention to me as I scoured up.

A house lied to my left, again, the weeds being taller than me and up the road had an abandoned trailer which I wasn't too daring to figure out if it was truly abandoned or the site of a statewide meth making operation, where they cut off your toes, and toss them into the batch to guarantee quality.

With Jimi Hendrix's National Anthem blasting, we followed the incline excruciatingly upwards, to a small graveyard that overlooked the local church and a nest of bald eagles; who scanned the area for remnants of rotten flesh.

Miles later, and even further into cannibal country, we stopped under a bridge in search of a saw mill I had seen online.

As we stood at the banks of a small creek looking down, trying to see if we could spot it from our location, we were stopped by a woman who explained that what we had searched for was on the land of a local junker and ''good luck'' trying to get on the land to inspect it.

We drove down the road and into the junker's property. The property was dead quiet, the front door of the house completely open, and in broad daylight. 

Shortly, a short man in an orange shirt came up and asked what I was doing there, before I could explain, he understood and laughed, saying the same thing that the woman earlier said. 

He took me to the real owner, who was behind a huge barn besides the house, who had an entire car propped up on its side by a forklift. He was busy taking bolts out of a car when he wiped his brow and spoke to me. I explained my mission and he was short; ''no''. Asking why, he explained that ''ever since pictures of the mill were posted online, they come at random hours of the night and day, all year round, and I don't want the liability''. He was a busy man, so I respected his wishes, and was just glad that he wasn't someone crazed after years of snorting gas rags and hunting down humans for sport.

Part Three: No Surprises 

A mailbox covered in overgrown weeds marked the town of Littleport; five, seemingly lived in, houses and four, completely abandoned, houses was the entire town. We drove up and down a gravel road expecting more than that, but there was nothing, fertile field and a forest was all we saw, so we drove back into the small patch of the town. 

In the middle of what was the town, was a cul-de-sac, with an old basketball hoop, hanging by threads off of a dilapidated garage, and a two story home; I quickly observed the abandoned house to my right as we drove out back into the highway, snapping pictures out the window, as dogs howled out in the nothingness. 

It seemed like some type of cult was begging to come out of the woodwork, surround The Inchmobile, and pour chicken blood all over the dash before lynching us out in the field until we were so feathered and tarred that we couldn't even feel the beatings of the crowbar against our bare backs anymore.

Finally, even more deeper inside moonshine country, we stood at the remains of Donnan; population of seven in 1990. The town sign was on someone's property; small, old, powerlines stood against their replacements, and the road led to nowhere...''but is this pie good'' said The Inch as he shoved the gooey remains of the pie, he had gotten earlier that morning from Breitbach's, down his throat and followed up with a cigarette that tasted amazing in the heat.

With three hours of daylight remaining, The Inch cut the trip short, saying ''oooh myyy, like dude, seriously, we couldn't have done that on one of the other days?...we're in northeast Iowa and we're going all the way to the ****** bottom of the state...and then back up to the middle'’. I felt defeated.