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TOWN GUIDE
WITHERD BRANCH: A TOWN GUIDE (Starting With We Know It's Mispelled)
Enhance!
▸ Witherd Branch Town Hall & Square
Once proud, it now seems to loom bitterly over town square with its clock forever stuck on 3:17. Inside, shadows gather between filing cabinets filled with indecipherable paperwork and yellowed photographs of forgotten faces. Town square is where most of the apartments, townhouses and shops are located. As you approach the edges of town, things tend to get less developed and a lot more ramshackle.
Old, rusted vehicles sit abandoned in the streets, one of the only signs there used to be life here. Those, and the clothes and photos rotting inside the houses, eerie remnants of lives no one remembers. Whoever these people used to be, they left. Fast.
▸ Willow Park
A long over-grown park with rusty playground equipment sits next to a large lake, green with algae. A willow tree grows next to the lake. It leans over the lake, whether burdened by gravity or mourning, some of its leaves gently scraping the surface, casting ripples.
▸ Maple Court
Rows of identical houses, paint peeling and shutters rotting away. Whatever remains of any personal belongings after all this time say they were abandoned in haste. In some houses, you can find the occasional hidden stash of expired canned goods, as if some people were hoarding them before they abandoned their homes.
▸ Cedar Apartments & Townhouses
A cluster of apartments and townhouses near town square. Much like the houses, everything seems to have been abandoned in a hurry, in a time long passed.
▸ PineMart
The only grocery store in town, surprisingly picked clean for somewhere everyone seemed to have ran away from fast. Not that any of it would be good by now anyway, even the lone can or two that might have been left behind would certainly not be edible.
▸ Hollowroot Chapel
An aging wooden structure with a sagging steeple, its bell cracked. Stained-glass windows shattered, leaving glass shards glittering like jagged teeth in the sunlit pews.
▸ Hollowroot Rest
Overgrown gravestones lean drunkenly from the earth, inscriptions worn illegible by time. Mausoleums gape open, as if something within has fled, or worse, escaped. At night, shadows between the tombstones shift subtly, following any who dare trespass.
The inside of the on-site funeral home is just as ruined and decayed, however something catches your eye. Something new; the door leading into the back of the funeral home is covered sloppily in yellow caution tape, a stark contrast to the dinginess of everything else.
▸ Redbud Flats
On the south-east side of town, a dirt lot scattered with a few rust-eaten trailers. It looks like there used to be more, but like other areas of town, a fire seems to have broken out and spread to neighboring trailers.
▸ Oakline Service
A relic of simpler days, the pumps are silent, their hoses dry and cracked. Inside, the register hangs permanently open, a faded calendar marking a forgotten year. A weathered notice board outside bears photographs and handwritten pleas from loved ones, all bleached illegible by sun and time.
▸ Hawthorn Library
At least, the remains of what used to be a library, which is now half-collapsed from a fire that ravaged in another lifetime.
▸ Aspen Diagnostic Center
A small clinic that may have once had a warm air and one tired doctor on the verge of retirement. Now the windows have been smashed, file cabinets overturned with moldy, indecipherable charts from long ago strewn across the floor.
