No Cheer (The Big Nothing Part 15)

My nerves were tight. I carefully dialed the phone number given to me in Sigourney by the cute waitress. 

Each tone felt like another few feet up the roller coaster; my stomach waiting to drop. It didn't go straight to voicemail this time but I knew it'd be only time before she'd return my call. I sat down to write but I could barely think of anything to put to words. The line of the word processor blinking at me.

The phone rang. It was her. She had a slight lisp but the voice sounded very sweet to me; a little shy. I didn't know what to say. I never really did. She was surprised that I actually called. Why wouldn't I? She was really cute. She told me that I was the cutest guy out of our group.

I began to tell her a few quips about my life. Jumping from whatever I could think of that was the most important to keep the conversation going. She mumbled to herself a lot on her side, when I asked about it, she laughed and said she was doing laundry and making her bed as we talked. She didn't really tell me that much about herself except some details about her family and living situation. 

There were long periods of silence that were filled with barking dogs, children, and some yelling. She said that it was her roommate and her child. The dogs were theirs. 

There were some loud whispers, another long pause, and she finally asked: ''Do you wanna go with us to go see the Christmas lights in Ottumwa?''. I looked at the blank page on my computer, it would be blank for a while, and said ''Yea''.

The wait was excruciating. I felt excited to see this attractive woman but I also felt the slow, long, dread of the conversation that'd probably occur after it was all said and done. I couldn't put hope in this working out but when she told me about her life. I wanted to see if I could be a part of her life somehow. If I could be there for her to rely on. That's all I would have wanted. 

I sat in the same exact spot for almost the whole entire time that I waited; an hour and a half. I couldn't remember the last time I was this nervous. 

She called me when she was ten minutes away, she was freaking out about the traffic: ''I almost died three different times. This is the reason why I could never live in the city''. Cedar Rapids is as much as a ''city'' as McDonalds is an actual resturant. I couldn't help but laugh. She pulled up in the driveway, in a beat up van, and I got in.

She seemed nervous, still worried about the traffic, she pulled out a cigarette and smiled before taking a long drag. She was definitely the pretty waitress from Sigourney. I tried to reassure her about the traffic but she emphasized that she doesn't do this for just anyone. It hit me there that she was really into me.

We drove across the highway, an old woman drifted a few inches into our lane before remembering that she'd better operate her motorized vehicle rather than screw around on her phone; ''This is why I hate big cities!'' she said. I laughed. She was a genuine country girl.

The drive was long, I grasped for conversation, but she was very quiet. I talked to beat the awkward silence and the crappy country music quietly humming on the radio. Her friend, and fellow waiter and roommate, called her just before we left Cedar Rapids. They were both laughing. She, on speaker phone, was talking about an ''interrogation'' that would occur once we arrived..and some shepards pie.

The sun had begun to set about half way on the trip back, she lived in What Cheer but worked in Sigourney, so the ride was going to be a trek. 

Once the sky had turned completely black, we were in the far reaches of the country. I pointed out into the beautiful, yet haunting, canvas around the solitary country highway saying: ''So the city scares you but this doesn't?''. 

She laughed and said ''No''. I told her that this is cannibal country. You get hacked to death and they don't find you for a few decades. If you get injured, the nearest cop and/or ambulance is forty minutes away. She said that she didn't think of that before.

It felt too weird to be back in the town of What Cheer. What was I doing here again? I didn't think I'd be seeing that stretch of abandoned buildings again. It almost felt ominous.

We went up the hill behind the park I had been walking around with St Nick the day before. It all looked that much more strange in the dark. 

The van creaked and slammed down a narrow gravel road until we got to her house. The backyard had been ripped up by the tires of the two parked cars; her minivan and her roommates Jeep. I could see into the two back sliding glass doors that the light was on. People were walking around. 

Walking down the small hill to the house, by an old shed with two tvs out on the lawn, and a makeshift fire pit right by the back door.

We walked in and I was standing in a small, hot kitchen. The waitress who had given me her (Kristen) number was at the oven putting slices of cheese over a pan of potatoes. Two dogs, a german shepherd and pitbull pup, came running at me. They licked at me and sat at my feet. The woman (Sara) laughed and said that they had never done that before.

An excited man came out of a room, shook my hands, and wanted to know if I wanted to see his ten gauge shotgun. I laughed and nodded my head. He came down quick with the black shotgun, cocked it with one hand, and started describing it to me.

The man, Thaddeus, spoke quickly, with short laughs and always with a grin. Sara looked tired, she was busy with the shepards pie, but started ''interrogating'' me without flinching. I laughed but I respected her demeanor. 

Answering her questions quickly, she seemed satisfied. Thaddeus would cut in after every few sentences about his progress fixing up the house. He pointed out this and that, how he got that deal, and what needed to be done. It was interesting. ''Finish one thing and have a thousand others, right?'' I said while slowly nodding.

Sara would curse out Thaddeus and try to regain the conversation. Kristen sat on the hardwood floor and grinned up at me: ''I told you that they'd do this''. I didn't mind.

Sara started telling me about her life, being born in Ireland, how she got to Iowa and how she got to What Cheer. It was a harsh story. She was a very blunt woman but It was easy to see why when she described what she had been through, what she had seen, what her own family had put her through. She would echo a lot of my own experiences with my family. 

She told me that her grandmother had a bar in What Cheer, right by the auto store, she spent a lot of time there because her home life was difficult. It had been closed for about fifteen years but Sara said that, every now and then, she still had dreams about the bar.

She had been in the area for most of her life, she desperately wanted to go back to Ireland, and raise her five year old child there or anywhere that wasn't What Cheer or Iowa for that matter.

She was just making it there with her son, Thaddeus, and Kristen. They were all that she had except a few from her own family that she still talked to.

Kristen and Thaddeus would quip in between Sara's stories with random comments which would go until Sara would get annoyed and say ''I love you but I wanna drown you in the bathtub''.

They were their own small family.

Sara took out the sheppards pie and handed out everyone a dish while she was finishing her story. I was transfixed by the details, I would look at Kristen, and smile at her to remind her that I didn't forget her; she had been through her own tragedies and relationships with foolish men. 

Sara was known for her cooking, and by the time I had got it down; we were getting ready to leave for Ottumwa.

As we all got into the Jeep, I was amazed that these strangers took me in with hospitality and indifference. We started on the long drive to Ottumwa. 

Thaddeus drove fast down tight country roads and I was freezing in the back with Kristen and Sara's child.

I kept inching closer to Kristen for warmth. She took out a cigarette and opened the window closest to me, her arm resting on my legs to control the window, I'd look at her and smile. She, as many other times that night, shook her head and said ''What?''. It had been a very long time since I had been able to look at a woman's face in admiration and feel the same look back into my own eyes.

Thaddeus had installed some speakers in the jeep and Sara would use them to blast early 2000s rap while singing along to them. It seemed oddly familiar so I felt comfortable. He talked about many things at a rapid pace but I tried following as best as I could. It was getting cold from the lack of A/C and the open windows for cigarettes.

It seemed like a very long time before we got into Ottumwa. We drove outside of town, going down the highway, until we saw the park lit with Christmas lights. It was getting harder to see out the window as it was fogging up. 

Thaddeus swerved a bit but we found our way in the park. Kristen got excited, it was cute to see the big smile on her face, and pressed her face against the glass to see the lights. Ahead of us, was an SUV filled with high schoolers who drove very slow. They'd stick their heads out to sing Christmas carols to no one in particular. I stuck my own head out to cheer them on.

''I can build my own lights for you, babe'' said Thaddeus as we passed through a tunnel of stringed lights. ''Just need a generator and some lights. I can build anything for you, right babe?''. Sara and Thaddeus would kiss and Sara would say ''I love you but you're annoying''. He'd just grin at her and scratch her back.

Thaddeus remembered Sara wanted to get some bones for the dogs at Wal-Mart and it was everything you'd expect at a Wal-Mart in Ottumwa; Good ol boys, grandmas with packs of Busch Lattes, and sad women.

We passed the woman's clothing section when we passed some slippers, Kristen spotted some owl slippers, and said ''I LOVE anything with owls on them''; a shine was in her eyes as she went on about them. They all were laughing, Kristen would be looking back at me as I looked at her, and Thaddeus would pick up everything that had the color pink on it. 

Everyone in the store, except this small family, looked miserable. Old men rolled their eyes, people carted big screen TVs around, and hoochie little girls ran around giggling.

As we walked in between the aisles, the women started walking faster ahead of us as they kept looking back and whispering. ''Are they always like this?'' I asked Thaddeus. ''Usually'' he responded. He asked what I thought of Kristen. He told me that she had a lot of guys screw her over. That she just needed a good man in her life. I didn't know how to respond. It was such a long answer. I knew I couldn't be with her but I knew I had to tell her that. I just hadn't done it yet. I responded dumbly: ''she's cool''.

It always seemed that Thaddeus and Sara knew someone wherever they went. Thaddeus' brothers worked at Wal-Mart and Sara knew the manager of the McDonalds that we went to afterwards.

The place was disgusting. The bathroom was something out of a stereotypical complaint against public bathrooms; the putrid smells, stains of bodily fluids, and the floor was sticky. The floor of the place itself was covered in french fries and spilled pop; Sara's sandwich had a hair in it and a homeless guy slept in the back. 

''You have no sense of humor, Chris'' said Kristen as I shot a straw wrapper at her head. ''Your salty, get it?'' said Thaddeus as he threw french fries at Kristen.

On the way back to What Cheer, I was so cold that I would get closer and closer to her, she'd look at me and I'd look back at her. I saw something in her eyes that I haven't seen in a long time. She really did look at me, smile, and I knew she wanted me. I couldn't stop looking. I felt at home when I looked into her eyes but I still knew I couldn't be with her.

We got back and we were all sitting in the kitchen, Kristen went into her room as Sara and Thaddeus talked to me. ''I don't want her driving back this late'' said Sara. 

I knew then that I was going to spend the night and I knew the only place I had to sleep was in Kristen's bed. My mind went blank. Kristen came out in an owl onesie. The thing even had wings. I laughed but noticed that I was getting really tired. It all hit me at once. I was exhausted.

I was really nervous but I said that I was going to bed. I went into her room, the walls were half painted purple while the rest was blue, her bed was a mattress on the floor with some cozy blankets. I sat down on it, it felt real squishy and soft, I laid down. 

She came in and I asked her what side of the bed she wanted. She wanted the closest to the wall so I stayed in place as she turned off the light. She laid down, gave me some blankets, and she turned to look at me. I couldn't handle it anymore. I had to tell her. So I did.

I carefully explained my reasons. She didn't say a word; just looked up at the ceiling. I asked her if she had anything to say. She didn't. She turned and went to sleep. 

I felt like a moron. I really pissed her off and I couldn't blame her. When she'd wake up tomorrow, absolutely everything would change, she wouldn't look at me the same and I'd probably never see her again. I sat there; depressed.

The heat began to kick on and it quickly got very warm. It gave me a headache and I couldn't think at all. I kept turning to look at her while she slept. She softly snored.

She looked like she was at peace. She had her hands intertwined together at the waist. It made her even more beautiful and made me feel even worse; not for my reasons but that this wasn't going to work. I just wanted to hold the woman and make her know that I wanted her but I couldn't. 

It wouldn't work out. I felt empty, drained, and I still couldn't sleep.

I sat there for hours, It was so hot that I took off my shirt and socks, and waited for her to just get up and beat the crap out of me. I felt like if I would have slept, I would have woken up with that shotgun in my face. So I just sat there, occasionally looking over to admire her before I would never see her again.

That morning, when the sun was finally up, Kristen got out of bed and got dressed in the bathroom. Sara came in and gave me some biscuits from the local gas station. Kristen came back in and was fixing her hair. She'd look at me when she caught me looking at her; now looking annoyed. I wanted to die.

Before leaving to go to work, Sara asked her: ''So what should we do with him?''. Kristen shrugged and left. Sara looked at me and said: ''Well I can at least show you around town for your book''.

''I've lived around What Cheer for much of my life'' said Sara as she drove around in the Jeep with Thaddeus in the passenger and her child in the back.

She pointed out that the buildings downtown were always there and always changing. 

One, a hotel. Another, was a movie theater, diner, and now abandoned. ''I don't know why they just won't knock down this s****. They call it historically important but they've let it go to s****. It's all black mold and you can't even breathe''. The rubble from a building that was knocked down earlier this year still laid by the other abandoned buildings. 

''This place used to be bangin', we had the telephone company, movie theater, and slowly the town just began to die''. She told me about how most of the residents were either junkies or stuck up; pedos or close to dying. 

We drove a little outside of town, she wanted to show me what was left of what made What Cheer; the coal mining plant. Little if anything is left of it now. 

A large lake is where the main building sat. At some point, there was an accident and the place had to be evacuated. The place must have been damaged beyond repair and they all lost their jobs. 

They hauled off all the bricks, concrete, and whatever made up the place except for a huge crane that nobody could get to. It was apparently still visible in the middle of the lake. I wasn't too curious to see how sturdy the ice was.

After the plant closed, everything started going to crap. The buildings and the people had deteriorated to what it is now; a meth haven. It was a really depressing story.

Right by the site of the plant was a graveyard, Sara pointed out the grave of a man who was murdered by another who wanted his girlfriend. Shot him in front of her, in the neck, and somehow; it seemed oddly fitting.

We drove around the rest of the town, the local school had been closed for at least two decades, and someone raised white deer in their yard. The buildings were all the same; shackled out or abandoned. 

The only decent looking house was a yellow victorian style, two story, that stuck out. Sara told me she had long wanted to get that place but never really could.

The only real local place to be was the only gas station in town. The place was always busy. 

The clerk always looked bored. Everyone around there looked bored. A homeless, santa like, man sat outside texting random women who wanted money (he didn't have) from him while smoking cigarettes. 

This whole place reeked of silence, sadness, and death.

We got back and I waited for Kristen to get off work. I talked with Sara and Thaddeus showed me more of the house. He eagerly showed me what needed to be done around the house. I started to feel this deep sorrow in my heart. 

I knew that I wouldn't see these people again. They were just making it together and they had each other. I sat in the kitchen for hours, just looking out the back window, trying to take in the scenery. I didn't want to forget anything.

Some good ol boys and their father drove 4 wheelers around the whole town. You could hear their engines in the distance.

In the nearby yard was a crack house with no electricity. Thaddeus told me that people fill it sometimes at night and someone from the house tried fighting him. 

In front of me, and behind the house, was the remains of a house that had burned down three weeks ago. Thaddeus had been using the remaining brick to make a makeshift driveway.

The sky was a light grey. The streets were quiet except the roar of the four wheeler engines. You could see most of downtown from the hill that the house was on.

I knew it was time to go when I saw Kristen's van pull in. I was outside with Thaddeus and she walked in the house without saying much. I walked in. She was getting dressed for a Christmas party she was going to after dropping me off.

I looked at Sara and Thaddeus. I thanked them for everything, wished that Sara could get back to Ireland, and looked at Kristen as she finished. She came out in leggings and a grey shirt. She looked great; beautiful even.

I walked out of the house and waved goodbye. Their dogs sat at the window wagging away; Thaddieus and Sara went back to living, and I never saw any of them again.

Turn Around (The Big Nothing Part 14)

There was snow on the ground this time but by the way the sun was shining it might as well have been spring. 

That's Iowa weather for you. 

Regardless, it was still cold when our boots touched the ground in Popejoy. 

Another nameless town with no one living there.

These places might as well not exist at all by the signs of life you see. It was bright and clear, houses with their drapes open, cars in driveways, but not a single person.

The school looked eerie, even in broad daylight, as it stood tucked behind a park and a dead end. The windows were blasted out and some were boarded up. 

An article of clothing acted as a makeshift flag as it flapped in the wind; stuck in a cluster of trees that were growing in the entrance of the school. We drove to the back so the car wouldn't be a sore thumb. 

All around were houses and a field that went on for miles. The white of the field burned your eyes as the light reflected off it. I was nervous but had to laugh at the sight ahead of us. 

The whole entire back part of the school had collapsed into the basement. Mounds of brick and trash made a treacherous pit easy to snap your neck on.

It was eerie, as it always was, the morning breeze was the only noise that accompanied the place.

St Nick brought another guy with him, Yakob, the tall cool one from the east. He wore wrap around sunglasses and looked out of place in our group but he walked right with us down the pit; slipping all the way down.

St Nick had wanted to see this little building, that must of been a back exit door, in the pit. The snow had covered a lot of what you were walking on so nothing ever felt like ground. The building had a stairwell that had large slabs of plywood smashed inside and bricks covered the floor. It sloped down into the pit like an access way of some kind.

We walked out of the pit and into the front door, a moldy teddy bear growing out of the ground greeted us, we slowly walked on the floor that was covered entirely in glass. These places always started with a stairway. The wooden doors of both up and downstairs were either thrown off the hinges or hanging on still. We walked downstairs and was greeted by a friendly swastika painted on the walls with the words ''Turn Around'' scrawled up the stairway in cheap spray paint.

The rooms of this place were almost unrecognizable but the walls were still held up by beams. Places in the ceiling had bottomed out and revealed rusty wire up in the air. A table covered in ceiling debris almost blocked the door into a corridor. The floor was empty except for the normal decay of brick, elements, and random crap strewn around. 

As I admired this fan that was still moving from the breeze, St Nick moved across the floor, cracking ice and pieces of brick under his feet. He pointed out that the other staircase was blocked off by a pile of ground up cinder block and logs of wood. A garage door sat mutilated as it still hung on the wall.

We kept going through rooms around the floor until we found ourselves at a stairway covered in roof, wooden beams, and brick; a dead end.

The only place to go next was down so we headed down into the even darker basement. 

Someone must have chucked a whole entire TV down from the main doors. It laid in pieces and it's glass made huge chunks easy to fall onto; right by an upside down children's chair with its legs shredded into sharp edges.

''Yep. That's gas.'' I answered St Nick as he came out of this room holding his nose. I personally liked the smell of gasoline. It was an old boiler room, it's tanks long rusted, and it's contents bottomed out onto the floor. The whole floor was discolored and still soaked with gas.

''This where you take a girl for your first date out here'' said Yakob as he shook his head and disappeared into another part of the building. I couldn't figure out where St Nick was finding these guys.

We were just wandering in this place, maybe the daylight offered that type of courage, I walked into this one room. 

It's walls were peeling like potato chips off the wall and all I could see was an animal carcass hanging out of a window. I couldn't see to my right as the wall was a blind spot and I was just waiting to see a junkie chowing down on a hunk of human meat. 

The corner was empty and it was just a raccoon in the window. It had long been dead and it's gybes had been out of it's sockets but it did look placed there. 

For all I know, this could of been the town cult meeting hall.

''This must of been an elementary school because the colors are a lot brighter than the last place we were at. Then again, these places were all ages.'' said St Nick as he wandered through a corridor. I think he was right, there were low hangers that had fallen off the walls that looked like an elementary school. 

This was the second half of the basement and where it had collapsed.

Huge sheets of brick, held together by concrete and wire, layered inwards out towards the direction of the pit. It didn't look like the work of demolition. This place was slowly eradicating itself.

''I don't think Asbestos can kill you. It's definitely not good for you.'' said St Nick.

''It can overtime'' replied Yakob. 

It's not like any of us wore masks anyway.

We finally went upstairs and saw that this had been the top floor. Morning light bled through an empty window frame and hit a row of broken windows that had been gathered and stacked against a corner. 

By the stairway was beams of wood and a trashcan full of glass. It had looked like someone had tried to do something here but quickly gave up.

I knew that this was the most dangerous floor to be on but I had to keep on. 

Someone wrote PROM on the wall and I wondered who came here to make out and vandalize on prom night. Probably too many people.

''Ask me about my wiener'' read off St Nick. He was reading off a chalkboard that was in a room upstairs. The thing was covered in scribblings of people coming in and out of the place. It almost seemed like a rite of passage through the place. Peoples names accompanied dates ranging from 2013 to some as recent as June of last year. Someone even had an entire party here on May, 5th, 2016

 

We walked onto a large, spacious, room that overlooked the other side of the building. We could see through the whole town from there.

We walked over to a room that had a moldy bed from someone sleeping in it or having sex. These places become large traphouses to the daring.

Across the room had a chair hanging from the broken window frames and a destroyed VHS tape of a lost Star Wars episode. This must have been where George Lucas had given his soul to Walt Disney. 

St Nick even found research studies of brainwashing material and the amounting evidence was piling. 

I looked down the staircase by the window but it was covered in piles of insulation and the door was replaced by plywood.

After some struggle, St Nick had rammed open a door stuck in ice as it was covered in old novels, children's toys, and another destroyed TV. Yakob found a potato peeler that he held onto for protection and later chucked out into the grass outside.

The principal's office had no window ledge anymore and was just a hole in the wall. 

I poked my head out there and felt the morning sun beam down on me. 

There was a long day ahead of us but I knew I would never see the place again. 

It stood in the silence of another winter to be seen by another passerby. 

Another that would look at it and forget it again.

Part Two: 

WAS THERE EVER AN END?

We headed west and went even further than I had before. Civilization was ending and I knew I was in West Iowa again.

The sun peeked over the rows of corn, we passed through town after town, the same had always been there. 

Faceless people drove the highway and figureless humans walked around invisible towns. 

The things that first drove them there had disappeared, they don't know what to do after that, so they sit there and let themselves become reclaimed by the elements. 

They dissipate into the blue sky, their ashes are scattered over the field, another hole in the ground, and the blood is swallowed up by the land.

It had felt like we had gone through all the conversations, we had been silent for hours now, and we approached another town. 

It was different; people existed here. The literal place was called Pocahontas. I don't know why. I saw young women and men walk the streets. The place was clean. The houses were all kept up and kids roamed the streets.

The highway cut through town and the agriculture business coming through was the only thing keeping the place this well. 

We drove downtown and all the buildings were symmetrical with the town hall like an old western town. 

The bars were all closed and so was everything else except a restaurant and gas station. It almost seemed like summer with all these kids wandering around.

We went into the restaurant, Family Table, and it was a home cooked style place. 

The inside looked retro, grandmas played rounds of cards in another room, and a few others nodded and waved at us. 

Our waitress was a nice girl and quick too. The wood paneling and coat rack reminded me of a church ice cream social or something. 

I had a bacon burger and the tip jar was a tiny pink trash can. 

Part Three: 

HOMAGE TO YOUTH

In the country, mail trucks look different, they usually just use someone's car.

They put a little yellow cop light on top and a sticker on the sides of your car and your a mailman. They kept passing us as we got into town, someone was busy fiddling with the large mailbox, probably for the whole town, right by a row of houses.

This town was small but very busy. A stretch of road that was used as a main road was where the school was.

This was the biggest one I had seen. It even had a gym and five stall garage. 

Before this, they had all been short buildings with a few floors but this was a high school like the one I had went to. 

It was right out there in the open, the ground around it looked driven on many times, and we parked right there in the middle of it in the middle of the day on the busiest road. I got nervous fast.

We moved behind the garage and waited as St Nick whizzed on the back of the building. Yakob and I took notice of the junked out Chevys in the back. They were empty metal coffins now.

There was a huge field, like the last, behind us. We could see semis crossing the highway from there.

I didn't want to go into the building by the front door, even though that all the doors were wide open and not a trespassing sign in sight, so I opted for a gangly door in the back, behind a small tennis court covered in tree limbs, and looked in. 

The ground was slowly disappearing, I didn't know how far it went if the floor caved, and there was a makeshift ladder made out of a metal bedpost. I climbed it and realized that the ground was the deepest that it'd go. It felt solid enough.

I was standing in an old staircase that was now a pile of wood and brick. Part of the ceiling was collapsing from water damage and water dripped down on the ground below.

We looked at a huge empty room. The ground looked sketchy. Just looked like ground up dust but I walked on it anyway. 

We had come this far and this was the most promising. I went slow until I felt concrete and found myself in a corridor. 

Light crept in through the smashed in exit doors and I looked into what had been a boiler room.

The electric furnace was a red massive piece of machinery. The concrete beneath and around it had buckled and is now just piles of large slabs of concrete. 

We went through all the rooms in the corridor; a men's and women's bathrooms with showers, some even still had showerheads, and a bunch of empty rooms that were unrecognizable.

After wandering the corridor for a few minutes, we figured that the large room we were in, when we walked in, was the cafeteria. 

We found the kitchen and it still had a fridge with a list of foods on the side. ''Polish sausage, nonfat dry milk, material added'' read off St Nick.

We went out of the corridor and into another hall. I turned and saw that the exit door had its windows smashed out and debris blocking it. 

I felt like someone was just going to come out of the shadows at any moment or a voice come charging at us but they never did. I looked ahead and saw a beautiful sight.

It had been the entrance to the gym and it reminded me a lot of my high school. I saw the brown tile on the sides, the concession stand, and the gym doors. 

When I was in elementary school, I used to dream that the place was abandoned like this so I could do whatever through the old halls and that's what people did. 

The doors leading outside were boarded up and had piles and piles of theater costumes, alcohol bottles, and more crap piled against them. 

There was an overhead window, now long gone, that lit up the hallway. A puddle had formed on the ground below and had started growing mold on the tile.

\

 

Someone broke the trophy case and wrote ''bring back the school'' on the wooden wall.

The wooden doors, leading to the gym, were still open. I could hardly wait. 

The gym was huge. There was a large stage towards the other side that still had it's curtains hanging from the ledges.

I turned and saw that the bleachers were rickety. There was graffiti sprawled all across the wall above. 

It was mostly remarks to people they probably hated while going there but there was also a date of April 1999. 

I would see it all over the building and I wonder if the place had only been abandoned since the mid 90s.

The floor had looked weak but we reasoned that gyms are usually built on ground level. It was covered in destroyed wood, long exposed rolls of film, and random things from all over the building thrown around the place. 

The ceiling had overhead openings that gave the place an eerie vibe as we walked through. 

The stage had been covered in snow as the ceiling above had bottomed out. It's floor was gone and we could see a ten foot drop. Nick and Yakob tried getting on it but they reasoned that it wasn't worth it.

We backtracked a little, St Nick almost spewed at the sight of a moldy bathroom that it's floors covered in ice and who knows what else. 

The tile in the bathrooms were still in good shape even though everything else was destroyed.

We went across the hall, past the gym, and into another corridor. 

It was covered in glass and broken overhead lights. I turned and saw, in the dark, tinted light. I couldn't figure it out because the electricity must of been cut long ago but we found that they were built into the wall so that the light from outside would shine through into the yellow, red, and blue tiles.

We went through the attached rooms besides the corridor and found more graffiti on a chalkboard. These were couples names and other explorers that had walked here through before April 1999 by a few months.

  

The wall besides the connected rooms had little tile windows with curtains still attached to overhead drapes. 

This ceiling also had water damage and it was caving in a little. Mysterious graffiti covered the doors and walls of the rooms.

Before heading upstairs, we found an old band room and storage room. 

There was a desecrated Peanuts mural on the wall, painted by the class of 1985, and sheets of music all over the ground. 

We almost trampled on the corpse of another raccoon on the way up.

The second floor was a typical, old, classroom hallway. It was like my elementary school before it got torn down. 

The classrooms had wooden flooring that had curled from water damage and the chalkboards were slowly disappearing. Some rooms still even had orange carpeting on the ground.

 

Whoever was doing graffiti up there had a fascination with a guy named Kyle and crude sexual remarks.

We went up the last floor, 3rd floor, and found that it had turned into a literal barn. 

The ground was covered in hay and feces of all kind. There were piles of it on the staircase leading up, the walls, and in almost every room up there. 

The sun was starting to go down and had gone through the broken out windows. 

The smell was intoxicatingly disgusting and the batteries to my flash on the camera had died.

The ceiling was even caving in with hay. It had looked like someone had gone nuts up there. 

I finally spotted the principal's office, with a secretary's desk, and even in the office was hay. There was a wood working room with overturned tables and more hay.

One of the more humorous graffiti on the walls was about where Nazi women go. 

Other than that, another classroom covered in glass and a riddle written on a wall ''1,2,3,4, Rene's at the door, ready to make an entrance so back...'' maybe it was the country rendition of Nothin But a G Thang.

We went right out the front door and even decided to go into the garage next to the school. It was a dust ridden place. 

It must of been a place for a class on mechanics; old gas station signs and metal sewing machines lay everywhere. There was even an old woodworking machine and riding mowers.

The place had about eight different vehicles in the stalls. They were all covered from the insulation of the ceiling giving out. 

Someone scribbled a date from a month before on the dust of a window. St Nick was dedicated to the exploration. He lumbered over the dust ridden things and tried to play a broken piana. We requested Homage To Youth. 

By this point, I could feel the disease of these places filling my lungs. The cuncer was thick in the air and I was ready for the clean air outside.

I breathed in deeply outside and looked across the bare highway. 

Cars, trucks, and semis passed us and not one stopped to say anything to us or ask. 

Nothing. 

Nobody cared.

We were out in this nowhere country and only so much light was in the sky for the ride home.

I sighed, looking at the school, the place must have been a big piece in these people's lives. At least in the youth's eyes. It was probably somewhere to go and be.

Nowhere else in the town looked like it could offer the same. Only houses and an abandoned gas station across the road.

This town was finished and it wouldn't have to take long before all the people die off in the town and realize that they've been dead for this long. 

Probably no one even notices. Another name in another paper. 

St Nick signed for me to get in and it wasn't long until we were back on the road. 

I looked behind me and saw the town disappear before my eyes.