Hell Is Other People

by Danielle Bellwood

  Gillian marched mechanically past the nonresponsive new security guard at the front desk. In the unisex employee facilities, she quickly stripped off her suit coat and looked in the mirror above the sink.

  The image reflected back at her didn’t look familiar. Gillian blinked at the soggy locks of hair dangling to either side of a face streaked with black eyeliner and dust which stuck to the thin sheen of coffee all over her face and neck. The previously white blouse below the face and neck was now woefully beige. As beige as the floor and the walls, and the ceiling, and the stall doors, and the bank of lockers behind her.

  Stripping off the now irreparably soiled shirt, she shook it unceremoniously into the rubbish bin and shimmied out of her skirt, setting the skirt carefully on top of the suit jacket beside the sink.

  In the exact center of the wall of lockers was Locker No. 61. A prime number. Perfect. Beautiful in its serene simplicity. Serendipitous, really, that she should have been given this locker since it was one of her four favorite integers.

  Gillian may not have noticed it yet, but since leaving the coffee shop, her OCD had been working on max setting. Today, her disorder was ranging in the Overly psychotic Completely neurotic Disaster spectrum. Not the best state of mind to be in, especially when she was about to be blessed with another chance encounter with her lately least favorite fashionisto.

  Arlo bounded through the space between eternity and the doorway like the veritable bull in a china shop, stopping in surprise at the scene of Gillian in her underwear in the unisex.

  “You again?” Gillian demanded. “What’s going on here? Are you punking me?”

  “Wuuuhhhh?” Arlo asked, elongating the word comically. “Of course not! This is where I work… well starting today, anyway.”

  He let out a nervous titter that set her teeth on edge. The wordless warble winnowed out to an uneasy silence.

  “So, yeah, don’t mind me. I’m just gonna…” He pointed at the toilet stall behind her.

  “No,” she growled. “Hold it.”

  He stared at her with wide eyes, slowly slipping out of the shared bathroom and letting the door close slowly behind him. Or before him, actually, if you want to be technical about it.

  Gillian struggled to regain control of her higher reasoning as she realized that she was stringing alliterative sentences together in a singularly strange fashion.

  Scrubbing her face roughly, slapping on a fresh coat of paint/makeup, and quickly changing into clean clothes, she grabbed her heavy (with coffee) handbag, slipped on her squishy shoes and sauntered to her work space.

  Gillian took a deep breath as she released all of the tension and frustration of the last one hour ten minutes. Dropping her bag on the floor beside her, she booted on her desktop.

  “Gail,” Roger’s monotone drifted from the doorway to her tiny but perfectly enclosed and cut off from everyone else space.

  She’d worked in the same office for… forever… but her boss just didn’t care what her name was so he called her whatever semi sort of close thing he could think of.

  “Yes, Roger,” she acknowledged him as she clicked away at her keyboard.

  “You have a trainee.”

  He may as well have said, “You have cancer,” because the sense of dread that descended upon Gillian in that moment felt like a death sentence. She knew without a shadow’s left butt cheek of a doubt that her ‘trainee’ would be none other than-

  “Jean-Paul!” Arlo’s bubbly voice blurted out. “What are the odds?”

  The odds? The ODDS?! Whatever the odds were, they definitely were not in her favor.

  Gillian squeezed her eyes shut and prayed that it was all just a horrible nightmare. Maybe, if she was lucky, she’d wake to find herself curled up in bed, blissfully unencumbered by the unwelcome role of trainer.

  The squeal of wheels along carpet set her teeth on edge. So… definitely not a dream, then. Arlo was dragging one of the rolling office chairs from an empty nearby cubicle to her side.

  The unprofessional-looking man sat on the cracked black leather seat and crossed one leg over the other at the knee, his jeans riding up slightly to show a bit of pale skin above the top of his shoe. Gross.

  “Supervisor Goodspeed said you were going to train me,” he said.

  Gillian ignored him. Maybe if she refused to believe he was really there, he would cease to exist. It was a thin hope, but she clung to it.

  “Ummm…” Arlo said after a moment. “Should I make some coffee or-”

  “No!” Gillian shouted. The painful memory of blistering java dripping down her body was still too raw. So much for ignoring him.

  “Oh, okay,” Arlo said softly. His eyes were wide.

  “Here,” she said, thrusting a stack of paper at him. “Go, make copies. The copy room is down the hall.”

  “Cool,” Arlo said.

  He jumped up from the rolling chair, bumping her elbow slightly in passing as he rushed from the cubicle. Gillian tensed at the brief skin to skin contact. Gritting her teeth to hold back the desire to scream, she waited until she heard the door at the end of the hall slam shut behind the hipster before letting out a ragged breath. It was going to be a loooooooooong day.

  “Geraldine.”

  Roger’s dulcet tones grated against Gillian’s ear drums.

  “Yes, Roger,” she said.

  “Can I get you to clarify the discrepancy on this claim?”

  She swiveled in her seat and grabbed the piece of paper Roger held out to her. Scanning the itemized claim, she quickly spotted the discrepancy in question. Someone signed off on an insurance claim for $975 on a thirty-day sample of Forever Pharma’s patented ED pills, KPRup X4. The samples were generally given to providers at no cost.

  “I’ll take care of it, Roger.”

  “Good,” Roger said. “I knew you’d handle it. When you’re done, show the new hire how to enter data. Accounting is sending over a big stack of new claims that you’ll need his help on.”

  “I’m sure I can do the new claims alone, Roger,” Gillian said.

  The last thing she wanted was to share her sacred space with an annoying temp who’d probably be gone by tomorrow.

  Roger shrugged slowly. The baggy, yellowing dress shirt that hung on his scarecrow-like frame rustled unpleasantly. “Accounting said you’re supposed to work with him. Give him the complete tour of the process.”

  Roger waited for a moment before deciding that she wasn’t going to respond. As he turned and shuffled off down the hall to his office, Gillian clutched the claim so tightly in her hand that it crumpled into a loose paper ball.

  Enjoy the good times while they last because something terrible is about to happen.

  The Fourth Chapter

  As Gillian leaned against the tile counter of her kitchen island, she watched the dieter’s single serve entrée rotate through the tiny window in the door of the microwave.

  Today had felt like an especially awful form of torture. In summary:

  Almost got killed by a bike.

  Could have been killed on the toilet. Luckily didn’t.

  Got burned to hell by flaming hot coffee.

  Was shadowed all day by a temp. Definitely the worst. This should be number 1 on the bad shit list.

  The ding of the microwave timer signaled that her tasteless, 100 calorie, low sodium, gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan dinner was ready for consumption. Yummy.

  Gillian sat at her tiny dining room table on the less wobbly of the two chairs, and ate her meal without gusto. She wouldn’t call the solitary life she lived sad. Or lonely. Those things would imply that she would feel better off in the company of another person. But to Gillian, being in the company of others was hell. She was comfortable by herself, at a tiny table in a tiny dining room/kitchen/living room in a tiny apartment with no one to have to share the tiny space with.

  She enjoyed dining alone where no one would have to hear her chew. Or, god forbid, where she would have to hear another person chew. Sh
e enjoyed having the TV remote to herself, even though she hadn’t turned the TV on in so long it would be a miracle if it still worked. She enjoyed having the entire bed to herself, even though it was so damn cold in her apartment that she always curled up in a tight, teeth chattering ball until she managed to shiver herself to sleep at night. And most of all, she enjoyed the quiet; the utter silence that saturated the foot-thick cinderblock construction. It was the single marketable amenity of the flat, but a good one.

  Dropping the now empty food tray and plastic fork into the otherwise empty kitchen trash can, Gillian grabbed a bleach wipe from the economy sized tub under the sink and wiped down the table for crumbs. And the chair. And all of the kitchen counters. And the inside and outside of the microwave for good measure. Then she spent the next hour and a half cleaning her apartment from top to bottom, like she did every day.

  Gillian suffered from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and had pirouetted right over the border line of Antisocial Personality Disorder. In fact, her need to control everything and everyone around her, preferably without actually making real human contact with one more person than was absolutely necessary, kept her in a constant state of heightened anxiety. She wrangled this mental beast into submission through strenuous deep cleaning. Ahh the relaxing scritch scratch of the gritty green cleanser scrubbing the porcelain sink. The eek eek of the blue sponge scrubbing the already spotless linoleum tiles. Soothing.

  Gillian flipped the wall switch beside the sparkling stovetop into the off position. In the dimness of the kitchen/dining room/living room that was so clean it glistened, a haphazard stutter of hazy yellow light outlined the door to the circa 1980s almond colored Frigidaire.

  She watched in lurid fascination as the faint flashes flared in a staccato rhythm from the glowing appliance like a telegraph machine’s precise code. S.O.S. HELP. Or was it: Feed Me?

  Her heels clacked against the linoleum tiles that she’d just been face to face with, hand scrubbing aggressively against the dirt that clung just beneath the surface. Grasping the wide, molded plastic handle, she pulled the door open. A tiny light bulb sputtered pathetically, letting out a faint hmmm of electricity like the whine of a sad dog.

  Gillian would never be able to sleep with all of this erratic light and faint racket. In the next room. Through thick walls and closed doors. Burrowed under her blankets.

  Gripping the warm bulb with her fingertips, she twisted it free of its socket. As the glass orb dropped the millimeters through infinite space to her palm, the kitchen/dining room/living room fell into blessed darkness and sublime quiet. Gillian dropped the bulb into the waste bin. She’d rather have no light in the fridge than suffer from an excess of it.

  Gillian marched into her bathroom and pulled back the pure white shower curtain to crank the knob to HOT. As she waited for the water to heat, she stripped off her clothes and dropped them in the hamper on top of her coffee scented work suit. The squishy shoes she tossed unceremoniously in the trash can beside the toilet. They would likely mildew and become stinky and she had zero intention of ever putting them back on her feet again.

  Stepping into what should have been a steamy shower stall, she suddenly shrieked a silent scream of surprise. The water felt like it had just run off a glacier. How the prevailing outside temperature could soar in the mercury bursting range and still leave the water in the pipes colder than a squirrel’s nut sack in Siberia was incomprehensible. Clearly, the condominium superintendent had not fixed the faulty water heater today like he had sworn on his life to do. You just can’t trust anyone anymore.

  Gillian lathered up her loofa lavishly with the liquid body wash, furiously frothing every square inch of skin and hair until the soap stung her eyes and slid down the drain in soapy streaks of suds. Her skin tingled and glowed and her hair would have squeaked it was so clean when she turned off the shower moments later and stood shivering in the aftermath.

  Grabbing a fluffy cotton towel, she quickly dried her hair just enough to keep the ice-cold water from dripping down her spine before wrapping the towel around her body. Once the uncontrollable spasms died down enough that she wasn’t in danger of breaking a tooth from chatter jaw, she changed into her cream colored pjs and crawled beneath the comforter on her bed to shiver herself to sleep.

  6:06. Gillian rolled over and glanced at the alarm clock. It took a second for the synapses in her brain to fire off an alert that something wasn’t right. Gillian blinked a few times, staring at the glowing red numbers. Six seconds later she bolted upright in bed and flung off the blankets. Scuffing her feet into her slippers, she grabbed her lighter and cigarettes off the nightstand. Halfway between her bed and the balcony door, she stopped. She didn’t have time for a cigarette. She’d lost five minutes.

  As she turned ‘round to deposit the smokes on the bedside table and head into the bathroom, she had a multi-sensory vision of stepping out on the balcony and being sideswiped by a bicycle messenger. Everything about the vision seemed so real, from the ripple of her silk pajamas billowing in the breeze to the call of the young man, “Watch it!”

  Gillian’s knees went wobbly and she almost fell. She crossed to the unmade bed and sat on the edge, taking stock of the thoughts running rampant in her mind. Running her hand across the bedspread beside her, she felt the soft texture of the duvet under her fingertips. It felt real. Was it real? That vision had felt real too.

  She glanced at the clock again. 6:09. She didn’t have time to ponder the mysteries of the universe right now. She needed to get ready for work.

  Precisely forty-two minutes after rising from her own inner musings to get primed and painted, Gillian walked out of her front door. Her long, dark hair was pulled back in a sleek knot, pinstripe dress suit properly dignified and classic, complete with nude leather heels. The very image of careful professionalism. A wine-colored shoulder bag provided a perfect pop of color. Perfect as any other day except that she was now eight minutes late.

  Every day of Gillian’s life felt exactly the same as the one before. She would wake up at the same time. Smoke a cigarette on her balcony. Get dressed in her best work clothes and apply her makeup, finishing up with 100 strokes of the hairbrush before pulling her hair back so severely that her eyes gained a faint slant and any wrinkle that might dare to appear was pulled fiercely up into her scalp. Then she would walk briskly to work, via the local coffee shop.

  Java Joe’s Coffee Haus had mediocre coffee at best, gutter sludge at worst. The barista, Joe Jr, didn’t really care much for his job and would leave the pot on the warmer pad all day long. The brew produced was invariably hot and viscous and black. Reminiscent of fresh tar on a summer day. Not what anyone would call appetizing, but he had the good fortune of being the only game in town so, hey, beggars can’t be choosers.

  Gillian paused in front of the smoked glass door to the coffee shop to read the red letters written on the white board hanging at head height. Java Joe liked to write little messages for his customers that he found funny, and that everyone else found frightening. Things like, ‘Happiness is fleeting, but death is forever,” or “Not all clowns are killers.” Today he had covered the board in letters so large that they took up almost every inch of available space:

  ‘You’re whole life is just a nightmare.’

  Gillian lifted her hand and used the edge of her thumb to erase the ‘ and e. Every other person who read this sign would thank her, she knew. She stared for a moment at the red letters on the white board against the black glass. The words resonated in her mind. Hadn’t she just been questioning her own reality? Was this message meant for her?

  Paranoia descended like a two-ton butterfly, drifting lazily down, flapping its wings to perch lightly on her head and drive her into the ground. Afraid to open the door for some reason which she couldn’t quite define, Gillian stood frozen just outside the coffee shop with one hand on the glass, locked in an inner battle of wills. To enter or not to enter.

  As she stood still as a statue, someone
pushed against the door from the inside and without thinking about the consequences of her actions, Gillian shoved back, knocking whoever was trying to exit with the door. From inside, the sound of a startled shout greeted her. Suddenly freed from her paralyzing fear, she opened the door and entered the shop.

  A mid-thirties man in designer jeans that probably cost more than her whole outfit stared back at her with his mouth comically wide as coffee dripped from his rumpled hair and streaked down his shirt.

  “How… how did you…?” he babbled, coffee drizzling off his nose and lips.

  “Excuse you,” Gillian said, never even considering that she should be the one apologizing.

  She stepped around the hapless hipster, careful to avoid the wide puddle of coffee from the now empty cup clutched in his hand. Walking briskly to the counter, Gillian faced Joe Jr and told him her name and coffee order. He stared blankly back at her.

  “Gillian. Medium latte with a single shot of espresso. Skim milk. Iced,” she repeated to the barista behind the register. He didn’t respond. Hell, he didn’t even blink.

  Gillian glanced to her left where a white paper coffee cup sat on the counter with the name “Jay Leno” written on it in black sharpie. She snorted lightly. That was obviously for her. She stepped over to the pick-up counter and grabbed the cup, turning toward the exit. A green neon sign glared garishly over the door with the words NO EXIT practically shouting at her as the neon in the tubes stuttered and glowed angrily.

  The coffee-soaked man stood hopelessly in the little lake as Gillian sipped her coffee. It wasn’t iced. Of course. Jr never got her order right. But at least it was room temperature so it didn’t burn her lips off as she closed the distance between the counter and the exit that was not an exit.