Hell Is Other People

by Danielle Bellwood

  Her leather heels made a cringeworthy squishing sound as she scurried down the cracked sidewalk. Swerving to avoid making contact with the hordes of pedestrians milling past like a herd of cattle, she stepped one foot off the sidewalk to the street below. Immediately jerking her foot back, she cursed silently as the bicycle messenger zoomed past, a spray of dust billowing up from the gutter where her foot was .01 seconds earlier.

  Gillian suffered from OCD, and a strong dislike for people in general that probably signaled an antisocial personality. The upside to her disorders was that it made her the epitome of professionalism. Gillian held her head high and ignored the strange looks she was getting from passersby who couldn’t help but notice her sopping wet skirt suit, or the brown liquid oozing from her shoes as she hurried through the spaces between warm bodies.

  Precisely thirteen minutes later, she walked through the automatic front doors of the boxy, unattractive office building where she worked. Crossing the open expanse of beige tile, she entered the employee bathroom.

  Inside her locker was a black pencil skirt and a cream-colored silk blouse. Unfortunately, there was not a change of undergarments. She would have to continue to wear the coffee stained ones. At least the unbearable heat outside on her way here from Java Joe’s was good for one thing. It had dried her out. Well, all but her shoes, which she now took off and stuffed with paper towels to soak up as much of the coffee as possible. And her purse. Oh boy. That thing made an almighty sloshing sound when she plopped it onto the counter by the sinks.

  Removing her jacket, she set it beside the purse, revealing her previously white now sepia colored blouse in all its unholy glory. Gillian sighed in resignation. Some stains never come out. The only place for this blouse now was the circular bin. She chucked it into the waste can and stripped off her skirt, piling the offending garments in a perfectly folded little stack to take home later for washing.

  Moving to the bank of lockers along one wall, she opened the tiny door to the locker in the exact center. Five from the left and right, five from the top and bottom. Perfect. As she reached inside for the change of clothes, the beige door to the beige bathroom swung open and the startled face of the socially awkward yet fashionably hip guy from the coffee haus blinked back at her.

  Gillian stared in shock. Why did she feel like she’d seen this guy before? Not from the coffee shop. But from before… She shook her head to clear her mind. Don’t be ridiculous. From the coffee shop.

  “What are you doing here?!” she snapped. “Are you stalking me?”

  He laughed nervously, the weird little chuckle echoing strangely in the small space.

  “No, no. I work here. Today is my first day. Do you work here too?”

  A sarcastic reply threatened to bubble to the surface, but Gillian bit it back and just responded with a narrowing of her eyes and a flaring of her nostrils that spoke louder than any words.

  He started to giggle again. God, that was painful. Thankfully, it died into a choked gurgle almost as quickly as it started.

  “Anywho… I just need to…” He pointed at the row of beige stalls behind her.

  “Hold it,” Gillian said.

  Arlo backed slowly from the bathroom, letting the door swing shut with a snap.

  Carrying the neat little stack of clean clothes to the counter, Gillian dressed quickly and rummaged around in the tiny jacuzzi of warm burnt coffee that her purse had become. Fighting against a gag reflex, she pulled out her lip liner and mascara. She looked in the mirror. Dark, damp hair spilled out crazily from what was left of her bun. Black lines of mascara dripped down her face like an emo clown.

  Gillian wet a paper towel and cleaned up her no longer perfect makeup, touching it up as best as she could. Then she finger-combed the heavy locks of her coffee-soaked hair and pulled it back into some semblance of a bun. Mentally screaming, she forced a fake smile onto her painted face and slipped on the only slightly squishy heels and grabbed her burgundy bag, ignoring the splash of coffee that rippled out as it left the counter.

  Sliding into her desk chair, Gillian dropped her purse onto the beige carpet, rolling quickly back to avoid the wave of tepid brown liquid that splashed out in a tiny tsunami of ick.

  “Jean,” Roger’s voice carried listlessly from outside the door to her cubicle.

  “Yes,” she responded without looking up from her computer monitor.

  Roger had never bothered to learn her name. It might have annoyed her if he wasn’t so boring that she didn’t really care what he said or did. She just preferred to be anonymous worker number four.

  “You have a trainee.”

  Gillian’s fingers froze over the keyboard. No. Please, dear god, let it be some boring drone to rival Roger himself, or even one of the incessantly chatty socialite women who liked to meet at the coffee haus for cappuccinos at noon. That’s what she wanted to happen, and yet she knew with perfect certainty that when she turned her head, she would see a mid-thirties man in skinny jeans and sneakers, and a goofy grin. She knew it with every fiber of her being like she’d already seen him standing there.

  “Oh! It’s you. Right on! Cool cool. Coolio.”

  Arlo. Hipster from Hell. Her worst nightmare.

  “So…” Arlo said, “What do we do here?”

  “We don’t do anything,” Gillian said. “I enter billing reports. You go make photocopies.” She handed him a manila folder.

  Arlo took the folder from her, a small nervous laugh escaping his lips as his fingers brushed hers for a moment. Gillian pulled her hand back like it was burnt, curling her fingers into a loose fist.

  At her slight cringe, Arlo said, “Hey, don’t worry. I don’t bite.”

  “I do,” Gillian said.

  Arlo laughed, the sound quickly dying down to silence as he realized she wasn’t joking.

  “Ummm…. Okay…” he stammered. “I’ll just go… make those copies.” He scurried off, his shoes making a faint scuffing sound against the carpet that set Gillian’s teeth on edge.

  She closed her eyes in pain, the beginning throb of a headache forming at her temples. So, this was what torture felt like. Cool cool. Ugh.

  Every day is another opportunity to ruin your life all over again.

  The Third Chapter

  Gillian dropped her rumpled skirt and blouse into the dirty clothes hamper in her bedroom. Peeling off the disgustingly coffee scented bra and panties, she chucked them on top of both sets of her filthy work clothes. After nine hours at the firm, she was exhausted in body and spirit. Training the overly-helpful and optimistic new hire had been its own special kind of torture.

  She opened the door to the bathroom and entered the pristine white space. Cranking the shower knob to hot, she took out her pony tail holder. The heavy locks of dark hair tumbled over her shoulders. Stepping into the shower, she let out a scream so high pitched it was likely only audible to dogs as the freezing cold water hit her skin.

  The super hadn’t fixed her hot water heater today like he’d promised he would. Teeth chattering, Gillian squirted body wash on the loofa and scrubbed her body so hard that she wouldn’t have been surprised to see a layer of skin peel off. Washing her hair in record time, she scrambled out of the shower and bundled up in a fluffy towel as she waited for her internal body temperature to return to that of a living person.

  Once the involuntary shakes ceased to mere background tremors, Gillian changed into her cream-colored silk pajamas. It may be blisteringly hot outside, but the A/C worked a little too well in Gillian’s apartment and it was currently 60 degrees in her bedroom. Burrowing into sheets and blankets, she curled herself into a tight, shivering ball before finally drifting off into a fitful sleep.

  6:00. The urgent buzz of the alarm jolted her awake. Squeezing her eyes shut against the inevitable, she procrastinated for exactly fifty-nine seconds before finally slamming her palm against the off button, ending the discordant blare.

  Throwing back the covers, Gillian climbed out of bed even more
exhausted than when she’d lain down. Dragging a comb through her rat’s nest of hair, she slipped on her isotoners and walked out onto the tiny patio outside of her room for a quick cigarette.

  Being right on the street, her patio was almost unusable. One chair and a rickety table that really needed replacing was all that would fit in the four x four square of swept cement. No rail and no barrier meant that she was essentially on the sidewalk the moment she stepped out of the sliding glass door. Flicking her Bic, she lit the coffin nail as the breeze from a bicycle messenger blew back the tails of her pajama top and made her hair flutter.

  “Watch it!” the guy on the beach cruiser shouted as he flew past, narrowly avoiding smashing her toes.

  Gillian dropped the lit cigarette in the gutter. The near death by bicycle managed to kill her craving for nicotine at the moment.

  As Gillian walked out her front door, she took a moment to appreciate the fact that she was alive. It wasn’t always easy to remember to appreciate the little things. Little things like: not becoming road kill or not shitting yourself to death in the bathroom.

  It’s a surprising fact that a lot of well-known people throughout history have died on the toilet. Judy Garland, Dorothy of Oz, died slumped on the can. Somewhere over the rainbow turned into somewhere down the drain for America’s sweetheart. Apparently, even sweethearts aren’t immune to the great swirling drain in the sky.

  Java Joe’s Coffee Haus lay along her path to work. Gillian knew that it would take her exactly eight minutes to walk there from her apartment. She knew that between here and there she would pass exactly seventy Saguaro.

  Some insane city planner decided that the cacti would be more attractive in the squares of earth cut out of the narrow sidewalks than shade trees. The shade trees in question would have provided, well… shade. That might have been a pleasant respite from the blazing heat that baked down from the full sun onto the hot, cracked concrete. Instead, the evenly placed cactus every forty-two feet offered no shade, but did offer a prickly poke if you were unlucky enough to brush up against one. Since Gillian avoided contact with other people at all cost, she managed to brush up against them quite often.

  Every day of Gillian’s life felt exactly the same as the one before. She would dance a fine line of avoiding contact with passersby, try not to get clipped by murderous messengers, and pick which body part was less horrible to be pricked by a cactus as she slithered through the spaces between people. The one part of her day where she took a tiny break between walking and working was when she ordered her morning coffee.

  Java Joe’s Coffee Haus didn’t have good coffee. It wasn’t cheap. It wasn’t gourmet. Hell, most of the time it wasn’t even what you ordered. But it was open every day on her way to work. And it gave her something to do with her hands other than wanting to wash them, or wring them, or strangle complete strangers for no good reason. Although, is there ever a good reason to strangle complete strangers? If there was, Gillian would be open to discussion.

  At precisely 6:51 AM, Gillian walked up to the black tinted glass door of the coffee shop. The sign hanging on the door read ‘Enjoy the good times while they last because something terrible is about to happen.’

  While the words were likely Joe’s idea of a joke, a not especially funny one but hey to each his own, Gillian shivered as she read the words written on the whiteboard in two-inch red letters. She stopped to stare at them for a moment too long. The couple closing in behind her wanted in the shop and she was in the way. They apparently took that as an open invitation to nudge her forward.

  Gillian spun around and glared at the middle-aged man and woman in matching Hawaiian print shirts and cargo shorts. Their mouths hanging open to say whatever comment they’d been about to make to get her to move, they froze in place. Twitching not a muscle. The angry curse that rose to Gillian’s mouth melted on her lips. The couple were so still, they looked like they were carved out of wax. Not even blinking, they stared straight ahead. As her mind fought to process the bizarre scene, Gillian decided it was easier to just go inside the coffee shop rather than analyze it too deeply. So, she hurried inside, and made her way to the cash register.

  She blurted her order to the teenage barista before he could ask and gave him her name. Feeling somehow off, she wandered over to one of the small tables and sat on the barstool waiting for her drink. A faint itchiness that started at the base of her spine was working its way all over her body. Fidgeting, she rubbed her arms absentmindedly, half aware that something was definitely not right. She couldn’t have said what it was exactly, only that there seemed to be something wrong with the world today.

  The young barista motioned toward her and she walked to the counter to grab her coffee. The medium latte with a single shot of espresso, skim milk, iced, was decidedly on the not iced side. More like hotter than Tucson, Arizona in mid-July hot. And the name printed on the side in black sharpie was definitely not Gillian.

  ‘Jean-Paul’

  Scratched onto the counter, just under the edge of her cup, someone had used a pocket knife to carve the words:

  Sartre was a hack. Make your own exit.

  Gillian stared at the words even more obscure than the ridiculous moniker Joe Jr. had stuck her with today. Feeling uneasy, she lifted the coffee to her lips as she crossed the room. The hellishly hot liquid death burned the ever-loving shit out of her throat and she sputtered in shock.

  A tiny dribble of coffee dripped from her chin and down onto her white work blouse. As Gillian watched the brown dot spread out in a blurry circle on the white silk, the edges began to waver and the color lighten as it evened out into a perfectly round stain. Her mouth parted open and she waited for the thought that she could almost grab ahold of to manifest. The faint echo of a memory or a dream warbled and then vanished, leaving her to shake her head at her own ridiculousness- standing in the middle of the coffee haus while her best work blouse stained.

  Sighing loudly, she grabbed a handful of napkins and rubbed the now hopelessly set-in stain as she made for the exit. Lifting her shoulder, she hitched her purse back up as she bumped the door with her hip. As the door swung in instead of out, Gillian felt a moment of perfect clarity a split second before the door slammed into her and her coffee cup burst in her hand, raining down 2,000 degree coffee like Mt Vesuvius.

  She didn’t cry out in pain as the burning hot liquid coffee lava flowed over her body, flaying the tiny, fragile hairs on her arms and immediately soaking her underwear with what might be the best birth control ever. She did, however, let loose a growl of unintelligible curses that anyone standing close enough to hear would later say sounded like the howl of demon tongues.

  Gillian stood perfectly still, staring at the trendy thirty-something man in designer rags. Hipster. The thought resonated like a bell in the dusty attic of her mind:

  This has happened before.

  The slew of garbled speech died on her tongue, burnt away like so much body hair under the wrath of a cup of over brewed coffee. Déjà vu. She’d heard of it, but this was the first time that she could remember ever experiencing it.

  “Oh no! I’m so so sorry! My fault. Totally my fault,” the hipster said quickly. He giggled nervously as Gillian stared in horrified fascination.

  When he grabbed a handful of napkins and started blotting uselessly at the drenched now brown blouse that clung alarmingly against her skin, Gillian didn’t bat his hand away like she normally would. She didn’t yell at him to get away from her. Instead, she watched with wide eyes as he apologized profusely and tried to help.

  “Did you…” She stopped, afraid of sounding like a crazy person. Or crazier person, if she was being honest. “Do I know you?”

  He let out one of his standard nervous chuckles. Again, the faint tinkle of a tiny bell brushed away the cobwebs in Gillian’s mind.

  This has happened before.

  And an even more powerful thought like the bong of a church bell reverberated throughout her being:

 
How many times before?

  Arlo stopped scrubbing stupidly at her trashed top and cocked his head at the curious question.

  “Do I know you?” he asked.

  “That’s what I just asked you?!” Gillian snapped.

  Brushing his hand away, she dropped her coffee cup onto the floor where it rolled to bump against his shoe, name side up.

  “Not cool, man. We only have one planet. Do you want to make it a trash planet?” He glanced at the name on the white paper cup. “Jean-Paul?”

  Wow.

  “I’m Arlo, by the way,” he said with a wide smile.

  “I’ll alert the presses,” Gillian muttered as she squelched out of the shop, soaked shoes leaving little lakes of coffee along the sidewalk.

  She had a spare work suit, sans jacket, in her locker. Luckily, she always gave herself extra time to get to work because today she was going to need it.

  Gillian squished speedily down the sidewalk, skirting several strangers. There were far too many people infringing on her rather large personal space bubble… more like a space atmosphere really… for her taste. So, she lifted one foot to step down into the mostly empty street and froze. The overwhelming feeling of déjà vu swept over her again. Jerking her foot back, she stared at the bicycle that appeared in the exact spot where her foot would have been if she’d followed through with stepping down into the gutter.

  Her eyes locked onto the glassy stare of the rider. He was frozen as still as she’d been a moment before. Okay, that was weird. His eyes didn’t blink. His bike didn’t fall over even though both of his feet were on the peddles.

  Gillian thought, maybe I should take a moment to examine what’s going on here. But she was already behind her tight morning schedule, and drenched, so she turned her head back to the madding crowd and forced her frame past knees and elbows and cacti, onward to work.

  After thirteen minutes of pushing past particularly pushy people, Gillian arrived at the uninviting, uninteresting façade of the big pharma finance office where she filled in. Full time. Gillian had OCD and antisocial proclivities that made it especially difficult to deal with coworkers on any grand scale. The medical billing office only employed fourteen people. A nice number of data entry engineers. Not too many. Not too few. Just right.