User:The Koromo/Rotten Apples (wip)

Situated in between a lonely woodland and a line of thick mountains lies the lonely rural community of Little Loop, Nebraska. Residing in Merrick County, near the state’s center, the town’s history for the main part is shrouded in fairly moderate normalcy; nothing more than a drive through Nebraska State Highway 14 through Niobrara and many grassy plains and oceans of grass and the lingering horizon, and you will come across this friendly little woodland neighborhood deep in the vastness of the Midwest’s heartland. In 1899 the town was founded under a locomotive company and middle-aged couple named Muriel and Heighton’s and over many decades eventually sprung into one of those “everybody knows each other” neighborhoods that Nebraska itself was expectedly so familiar with. With a miniscule population of 226 and the nearest college campus three miles further in the larger mountain town of Windhand, it was safe to say that the town of Little Loop was safe and alone. The town itself is not much to behold. Upon the grass in the far reaches of Nebraska State Highway 14, a certain slope will turn you slightly up the mountainside until you reach the tiny hamlet. This hick-ish, but not unfriendly mountain town area of Merrick was merely nothing more than a miniature woodland boondocks in the mountains. Houses were generally scattered, many in between peaceful wilderness and flowing streams and rivers. Farther out into the town, the woodland opened up and revealed the grassy mountain plains, complete with aplenty of homes that stood under the blue of the immortal sky. There was a small private high school in the area by the name of Highway High, of course based derivative of the name of the long, lonesome stretch of road that connected the thick Nebraskan mountains to the town. The hamlet had earned its name due to its circular structure of six woodland miles in total, ‘looping’ around a good deal of the portion of the forest. So the townsfolk nice, the atmosphere free, the landscape a spectacle, the town overall – normal. Until the post-Y2K days had hit and everything had altered drastically. In the pre-winter of 2000, the first occurrence in a chain of incomprehensibly strange events ravaged Little Loop unexpectedly and with no warning. Over a period of slightly more than a month about half a dozen townsfolk had disappeared without a trace leaving no evidence behind of their existence whatsoever, save for irregularly shaped dirt gaps. Mabel Barrington, superstitious widowed eldest resident of the town had of course spouted monologues about the occult and the otherworldly, but other townsfolk even after these events remained skeptical of her yarn. The Loop’s first official death would arise in July of 2007, more than half a decade later, when presumably unstable fifty-year-old townie fella from Denver by the name of Will Milling turned his rifle on twenty-six year old Clive LeBlanca in a presumably homophobic hate crime; half of LeBlanca’s face was blown off in the incident before he was immediately rushed to the miniscule town infirmary by his friends Ronnie Desmond and his wife Marty. Apparently Milling had tried to fire at them as well when they both had made haste with the dying victim of injustice, but his rifle jammed as he poked its scope in the direction of Marty and attempted to fire; but to no avail. Milling was sentenced to half-a-century in the ol’ calaboose, while LeBlanca had merely died of his wounds hours later in the town’s tiny emergency room. Hell would return to Little Loop on November the third, 2009. On Roans Central, which was the grassier, more open portion of the town that revealed the sky overhead, a graduated university student previously attending Appleton Academy three miles down the road in Windhand was roused from his slumber by beams of morning light filtering through his window across from his bed. He moaned and stretched, propping himself upward onto the sheet and staring out into the open space of fields beyond his window. The grass rustled and weaved under the morning light, the rising sun lifting itself over the mountainous horizon casting the shadows of distant pine trees and the woodland that they belonged to. The sun beamed also onto the multitude of homes, lights off and the insides quiet. The young man in his nothing but his undies yawned fiercely and squirmed out of bed before trudging over to the blinds and grabbing each end harshly before pulling them together. Annoyed that he had been awoken so early on a Saturday by mere forget of closing the blinds the night before, he pried open one of his drawers and grabbed one of his standard articles of clothing; blue jeans and a plain white t-shirt, which hastily applied. His clothing was often scattered disorderly in his drawers merely from a lack of care. Clothes were clothes. He flicked the light on shuffled over to his Blackberry where he and Milly’s conversation from last night lay when he snapped the phone’s screen on. Something about volley ball practice to which he had responded to passively in his mind, but sounding rather sugar-coated on his phone. He gazed down at it, read Milly’s “luv u hun ^_^” message that she had given right before he went to sleep and pocketed the cell. No matter her ditziness and godawful communication skills when it came to social media, sometimes his love for that girl could go beyond what he thought was even remotely possible. Darrell Weber and Mildred Lawrence would be together for three years come March 9th; a relationship that had begun in Darrell’s junior year and Mildred’s sophomore at Appleton University. But Mildred hated her given name and would correct as “Milly, if ya please,” which she’d say in that Midwestern drawl that had driven him wild whenever they together, especially in the sheets. Milly may not have been the sharpest tool in any of the sheds you’d find ever-abundant in Nebraska’s heartland, or maybe even in the Midwest as a whole, but to him it bore no significance. Whilst some would pass him off as ignorant for it, he never understood why the idea of intelligence mattering in relationships was so important to society; “his heart is bigger than his brain” was something his parents had always told him about him when they were still around, so why couldn’t the same apply for a woman? Darrell had graduated from Appleton a year ago at age the age of twenty-three, a year only added to his high school years because of a not-so-minor setback in tenth grade (which included urination and the principle’s quarters). Hunger rumbled from within. He groaned, his need for breakfast unsatisfied since his lack of a decent meal last night – nothing more than a handful of lame breadsticks and salami. In and exhaling, he stepped out into the hallway and trailed down to the stairwell where he descended. Darrell made a right turn into his kitchen to be met with the pearly white floorboards and dullard wooden cabinets. The room was a whole was both a mix of dining room and kitchen; his fridge lay off in a corner, but a table was