The Six Segment Story Stack to Start Twenty-Sixteen 

If you missed Part I through Part IV, please go back and read last week’s entry. Or you can find the story behind the story in the January 23rd entry. Enjoy!

  Hale was next to Heaven, yet it was nothing like it. Twelve apartment buildings lined the two lane road that twisted through the town. Two hundred tenants lived in each of the identical buildings.
 
  The bottom floor of each building housed a business, but none were run by residents of Hale. Residents of neighboring neighborhoods (never Heaven) owned the buildings as well as the businesses at the bottom of them.
 
  Humans came to live in Hale only when they had nowhere else to go. Most of these humans brought along with them a handful of half-sized humans, hoping for housing and healthcare and help with their hunger.
 
  If tenants of Hale were fortunate enough to be employed, they weren’t employees of Hale. They boarded the only bus that bussed them to the neighboring neighborhoods every morning, spent the day doing whatever is was they did, and then boarded the same bus which dropped them off in Hale at the end of the day.
 
  No cars occupied the streets of Hale. Only bicycles and baby buggies and the occasional bus ever bumped along Hale's boulevard.
 
  Unlike Heaven, half-sized heathens made up the majority of Hale. From eighteen months to eighteen years, they ran aimlessly around Hale all day long, contributing nothing but snotty noses and croupy coughs. Those who were tinier than eighteen months bounced their days away in the baby buggies that their mothers marched up and down the town.
 
  Once a week, a week's worth of food was brought to each building. It was then rationed out to each residence, based on how many residents lived in each residence.
 
  The few men who lived in Hale made it their mission to escape, thinking nothing of leaving their women and children in Hale the minute they found adequate employment in a neighboring neighborhood. Needless to say, the bus that bussed tenants of Hale out in the morning was always more crowded than the bus that bussed them back in the afternoon.
 
  There was no happiness in Hale, only heartache and hopelessness. The only hope came briefly when a boy child was born, that he might, eighteen years from that moment, hop on a bus and never come back.
 
  But for at least eighteen years he would have to endure Hale, which halted all hope anyone ever had.

  Lucy Littleton did not have luck on her side. She left her home in Hampton when by twenty years old she had two sets of twins and a singleton on the way. There were three different dads, none of whom were willing to do their daily daddy duties, and Lucy's parents no longer wanted to parent, either Lucy or the littlest Littletons.
 
  So Lucy Littleton and her little ones had nowhere to go but Hale. She secured one studio apartment (which was all Hale offered) in building number six.
 
  She received food for five every Friday, and if she was running out before the week was over, she wouldn't eat. That would normally be noble, feeding your children before yourself, but it was as though she would forget about the one in her womb.
 
  She hoped beyond all hope that the baby was a boy. Because not only had Lucy been unlucky in the choosing of the fathers for her children, she had also been given only girls. Four little female Littletons, with no hope of ever leaving Hale.
 
  Lauren and Lydia Littleton were two weeks shy of turning two when they first inhabited Hale. Their sisters, Lanie and Layla, were seventeen days short of seven months. And the baby that she hoped was a boy still had six months inside.


 
  Six months later, Lucy got her first glance at the littlest Littleton. What lay before her was a beautiful baby girl.  
 
  Lucy sobbed over the life that this little she would surely endure. As she cried, the creature in her arms began to coo, offering a brief moment of comfort for her mother. The sound was so soft and lovely, Lucy knew what she needed to name her.
 
  And that’s how the baby became Lyric.

  Lucy was lucky enough to know the one way little girls left Hale. But it took a commitment and a courage that couldn't come quickly.
 
  Lydia and Lauren were five, Layla and Lanie were four, and little Lyric was halfway to three before Lucy had all of Hale she could handle.
 
  Early one October morning she dressed her girls in their cleanest clothes and shiniest shoes and led all five of her little Littletons to the bus stop.
 
  The other Haleyons sitting at the stop were astonished at the sight before them. It didn't happen often, but on the rarest of occasions the youngest inhabitants of Hale would be brought to the bus stop.
 
  That wasn't where they stayed, though. They took twenty steps past the stop before she instructed them to sit on the stoop. A little line of Littletons lined the lane, waiting for something, but what it was they did not know. Lucy listened intently until off in the distance she heard the bus bumping up the boulevard.
 
  She gathered her girls and kissed each child on the cheek. "We shall see each other soon," she assured each child.
 
  She hustled her children into the street, stooping over them and shielding their faces. What she didn't notice was that the littlest Littleton had slipped away from the huddle.
 
  As the bus bounded toward them, she screamed for Lyric, but Lyric wasn't listening.
 
  She was safely on the sidewalk when she noticed her mother and sisters still standing in the street. She also saw the bus quickly approaching them.
 
  As the bus tried to screech to a stop, Lyric screamed for her mother and tried to reach her. But the bus beat her to it. Her mother and sisters were hit head on while Lyric slammed into the side.
 
  She was thrown to the curb, where she lay in a crumpled heap.
 
  Lyric Littleton was lifeless.

Coming next week ....