Hell Is Other People

by Danielle Bellwood

  “Are you going to pick that up?” she nodded at the coffee cup that had dropped from the hipster’s hand to rest on the floor beside his liquid coated Converse.

  He glanced down at the coffee cup with “Contestant #2” printed on it in black sharpie. As Gillian lifted her own cup to her lips again, she had another vibrant vision that seemed just as impossibly real as the one from an hour ago. In it, she was the one muttering in the middle of a pool of spilled coffee, clothes drenched and makeup marking black lines down her face like tribal tattoos. In the vision, a perfectly dry man stood beside her, chuckling awkwardly. Reality struck Gillian like a ton of bricks and she choked on a gulp of her latte, spluttering, and coughing as she fought to keep from drowning on a swallow of tepid coffee.

  Hacking and wheezing, she drew in a stilted breath. The hipster was still frozen in place, shedding drips of rapidly cooling liquid onto the linoleum floor of the coffee shop at his feet like a melting ice cube.

  “I’m Arlo,” he said softly.

  Gillian couldn’t even be sure that he was talking to her. He said it almost like it was a forced response followed immediately by a frightening little giggle that sent a chill up her spine.

  “What is reality, anyway?” she asked absently.

  Brushing past the somehow strangely familiar fellow while brushing away the cloying memory that was not a memory, she left the haus, lukewarm coffee in hand.

  Gillian hunched her shoulders to make her body as narrow as possible as she passed between bunches of business people on their way to work menial dead-end jobs. Between the clean cut, suit clad citizens and the cacti that filled the squares of soil in the sidewalk planters, Gillian had difficulty avoiding being touched. The constant arm brush or hip bump would spur her on faster to her unfulfilling employment at the billing office in Downtown.

  Gillian sidled through the sliding doors of the office building exactly twelve minutes early. Walking past the employee washroom, she paused for a moment, head cocked curiously, as she felt the desire to use the facilities. Not a bodily urge. She didn’t need to pee. It was more like a feeling of some vague task she needed to perform to begin the work day. She couldn’t have said what that task might be, only that it required her to enter the employee restroom. But not to use the toilet.

  It suddenly occurred to Gillian how unsettling it would be to pass on in a public bathroom. A lot of famous people have left this life while on the toilet, from celebrities to kings. One regal example being Catherine the Great. Famed Empress of Russia, Catherine had a less than great cup of coffee one morning that must have been on par with Java Joe’s as it left her sprawled out in horror over her chamber pot. Her epitaph should have read ‘Famed wit… died while taking a shit.’

  Gillian dropped her own barely sipped coffee into the trash can with a shiver, walking quickly away from the unassuming beige door to the potentially life-threatening lavatory.

  With ten minutes to spare, Gillian sat at the light wood colored laminate desk in her cubicle. The monochromatic atmosphere was equal parts soothing and depressing. Gillian always felt more productive when she could focus on the task at hand rather than if a room’s drapes clashed with the carpeting.

  Once, in what seemed so long ago that it felt like a past life, Gillian had a full on panic attack at an “upscale” hotel where some neurotic interior decorator who must have been blind or criminally insane had filled the 1200 square foot space with six-inch wide, striped green and white wallpaper AND a hideous yellow/brown dotted carpet. The horror. Even after all this time, the memory would still elicit shivers.

  Gillian dropped her port colored purse onto the short Berber carpet beside her chair. Booting up her computer, she waited impatiently for the ancient machine to cycle on. Good thing she was early because her desktop seemed to be taking forever to start up. Idly, she fidgeted with the items on her immaculately clean station. She unclipped the phone cord so that she could smooth out the loops that invariably appeared. Lining up the taupe enameled stapler evenly with the tape dispenser, she leaned back to eyeball the thin black “woodgrain” line on the desk to visually confirm that both office supplies were in perfect alignment.

  Nine minutes later, her computer beeped and the serene blue screen shined pleasantly out at her from the monitor. Sighing, she clicked away at the keyboard, logging in to her corporate account.

  “Jolene,” Roger’s voice droned from the door to her cubicle.

  She’d worked under Roger for far too long for him to still not know her name. In fact, Gillian had recently become suspicious that Roger may just refuse to call her by her actual name due to some sadistic desire to torture her and not because he was a moron. Although to be fair, he was definitely a moron so, maybe she was just being paranoid.

  “Yes, Roger,” she answered in response to some other woman’s name.

  “You have a trainee.”

  Those words struck a chord in her soul. A sharp twang like a breaking guitar string reverberated through Gillian’s mind, reflecting more than her standard fear of socializing in general. This fear was deeper, more profound, like coming face to face with one’s own mortality only to find that mortality was a 400 lb woman named Bertha who was falling off a six-foot unicycle and about to land on your head. Equal parts disturbing and fascinating.

  Gillian turned slowly in her chair, somehow sure that the new employee in training she was about to encounter was somehow an omen of the deepest utter calamity; a nightmare brought to life that she would never be able to shake no matter how fast she tried to run away from her own reality.

  “It’s you,” the man from the coffee haus greeted her.

  His clothes were tinted a perfect beige from the coffee so that he seemed to blend into the environment of the office like a chameleon, almost hidden from notice were it not for the goofy grin on his face and the nervous titter that announced his presence louder than a bull horn.

  “Do you remember me?”

  Ummm…. yeah! How could she possibly forget?!

  “Arlo,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “Yes!” His face split into a wide smile. “That’s my name. Don’t wear it out.” He laughed lightly and winked like he’d just told the funniest joke in the entire world.

  Gillian thrust a billing report at him. “Copy room. End of hall,” she snapped.

  The edge of the file caught him in the chest, and he let out a comical “oof” as though the lightweight folder had hurt him before chuckling again and hurrying off down the hall to make copies.

  Gillian choked back the faint taste of bile that bubbled up as she pondered the undeniable fact that she’d be spending the next nine hours with this painfully peppy person.

  Your whole life is just a nightmare.

  PART II: Arlo

  One Mississippi

  Every day of Arlo’s life felt exactly the same as the one before. He would walk to the coffee shop, order his large caramel macchiato hot with extra whipped cream, and browse social media before starting whatever new temp job the agency lined up for him. His artfully selected wardrobe would surely convince anyone who saw him that he possessed not only funds, but fashion sense as well. His dream of being a social media influencer hung by a silk thread every time he snapped a pic of his dinner plate or posted an update from his next destination.

  He’d been to every “experience” that he could drive to in his 1972 Cadillac Coupe DeVille. The gasoline spent on the road trips cost more than an airplane ticket but flying would have deprived others of seeing his classic automobile. And on an airplane, he wouldn’t have been able to listen to his 8-tracks.

  Arlo maxed out his credit cards on visits to the Frozen Yog-yurt, the Leaning Tower of Pizza Boxes, and The Land Before Time Pieces, a warehouse in Bleaksville that contained one fifty-foot long wall plastered with old wristwatches and alarm clocks. Worth every penny.

  Lately, Arlo had been forced to cut back on his experience addiction due to a serious lack of cash. Hence, the temp jobs. W
orking all day in some boring office job was slowly crushing his spirit. The spirit of a man who lived and breathed adoration from strangers on the internet. But he had to make sacrifices if he was ever going to be a media sensation so he sold his soul to the company store. Meh, it was a living. Sort of.

  Arlo’s overwhelming need to be liked was diagnosed by the therapist his mother found in the coupon section of the yellow pages as a Borderline Personality Disorder with narcissistic tendencies. Arlo had looked up the word “narcissist” in the online dictionary and learned that it referred to a handsome young Greek god. He embraced this newly discovered facet of his personality by going to the local Falafel Hut and ordering stuffed grape leaves. The photo of his dinner plate got over 1,000 likes on Instagram.

  As Arlo walked down the sidewalk to the coffee haus, he would occasionally stop to take a photo of an attractive cactus or say hi to a stranger. His meandering route might take anywhere from ten to twenty minutes, depending on his focus or lack thereof. He paused for a moment, laughing absurdly at the small boy crying at his mother’s side as a double scoop of strawberry slipped off his waffle cone. Poor kid. It was hotter than Satan’s left butt cheek out. No way that cream was gonna stay icy. The extra-large scoops turned into a foamy goop on the boy’s lace-up loafers. Yuck.

  Facing the coffee shop, Arlo smiled at the message posted on the door. In red letters, Java Joe had written ‘You’re whole life is just a nightmare.’

  Arlo chuckled nervously. Lately, he’d been feeling like his reality was a little altered. What was that Ozzy quote? Something like, “Reality is okay, but have you tried drugs?”

  As he opened the door cautiously, a tiny voice in his head whispered, there could be someone just inside the door. But the glass door swung inward smoothly and he sauntered into the shop, humming softly to himself.

  Joe Jr was helping an older couple in matching Hawaiian shirts who were asking what every single item on the menu was. Arlo giggled anxiously. This might take a while. Luckily, the woman with the dancing hula girls swaying across her chest told him to go ahead. She and her husband, Gordon, would need a minute.

  Arlo ordered his usual beverage and sat at one of the tiny tables to wait for his coffee. Some litterbug had left a napkin on the floor. Stooping at the waist, he picked it up only to find that the scratchy brown paper had a happy face drawn on it in black ink with the words ‘Welcome to the Hotel California’ written in careful calligraphy. Arlo crumpled the little note into a wad and tossed it into a nearby trash can.

  The unmistakable sound of the barista plopping a 20 oz cup of coffee on the counter signaled that his order was up. Arlo grabbed the taller of the two cups waiting for pick-up and glanced at the name that Jr had scribbled on the side of his drink with black sharpie.

  ‘Contestant #2’

  What a joker. Arlo lifted the cup in a salute to the comedian coffee slinger and started for the (NO) EXIT. As he pushed lightly against the tinted black door, someone or something on the outside pushed back.

  Arlo was never a stellar student. Far more interested in extracurricular activities, he’d barely skated his way through the courses required to graduate, skipping anything not absolutely, unequivocally necessary for a diploma. Too bad, because if he’d taken Physics 101 instead of making videos about who wore the worst Furry costumes at Comic Con, he might have recognized that he was facing a perfect example of the scientific definition of force.

  As Arlo pressed against the door, he was met with an opposing resistance. For one tiny moment, the two forces sang in perfect harmony, creating a hum that illuminated their existence for such a tiny fraction of time that neither Arlo nor the opposer noticed it. Within the blink of an eye, the force from outside overexerted Arlo and the door slammed into him and his large caramel macchiato hard enough that he ran right into his own coffee. The cup crumpled under the sudden coercion, and an anti-gravitational waterfall of coffee catapulted so high in the air that it nearly hit the ceiling before spilling down in a murky torrent on poor Arlo. Thankfully, Joe Jr had forgotten the whipped cream because that might have been a bit sticky.

  Arlo stared in shock at Opposing Force as she shoved her way into his reality. As sweet, lukewarm coffee dribbled down his designer togs, a woman whom Arlo somehow felt he knew faced him with a frown.

  She should be the one covered in coffee, Arlo thought inexplicably.

  That’s not to say that Arlo was feeling some bitter notion that the rude door pusher should be getting her just desserts, i.e.: sweet caramel macchiato on her hair and skirt suit. No. Instead he was feeling with every fiber of his being that this has happened before.

  How many times before?

  And that every time before, she was the one covered in coffee.

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

  “Excuse you,” she snarled in reply.

  Arlo stood frozen in place, macchiato sluicing off his shoes to gather in a wide puddle at his feet. He was concentrating so hard on every tiny detail of this moment and what made it so familiar and yet so distinctly wrong that he didn’t notice the coffee cup slip from his hand to splash at his feet, rolling to a stop beside the toe of his left shoe.

  The woman in the slim-cut dress suit and three-inch heels clacked across the floor to stand before him. She was beautiful in an austere way like a statue or one of those sculptures made of ice on cruise ships. Cold and sharp and impossible to touch.

  Glancing down at his feet she asked him, “Are you going to pick that up?”

  Arlo looked from the empty cup on the floor to her raised eyebrows perfectly on pointe with not one tiny dark brown hair out of place.

  “I’m Arlo,” he said stupidly.

  He was not prepared for her response, “What is reality, anyway?”

  She forced her way past him and out of the shop before he could formulate a reply. As the swinging glass door closed behind her, the coffee haus came back to life. Echoes of clinking flatware, footsteps, whispers. The Hawaiian print pair breezed by with matching cups of green iced tea. Java Joe Jr’s voice calling, “Order up!”

  Arlo picked up the empty coffee cup he’d dropped and carried it over to the waste can, sneakers squishing in a most disturbing way. Careful to pull the door in on the off chance that another ice sculpture brought to life might be waiting just outside to body slam him, he stepped out into the scorching heat. He was starting a new job today and he didn’t want to be late.

  As he cruised along the cracked sidewalks, Arlo mused about the appearance of the oddly familiar woman at Java Joe’s. Who was she? He would have been the first to admit that he had a terrible memory. As a child, Arlo’s mother, Mrs. Constance Black of 665 Whippoorwill Lane, Calamityville, MS, constantly hounded him to do his chores. Make his bed. Feed the dog. Turn in his homework.

  In Arlo’s defense, it wasn’t that he was lazy… necessarily, or disobedient… per se, it was that he couldn’t seem to remember anything past about five minutes. Unless it was something that he was really interested in, of course, like planning a road trip to see the Pink Flamingo Extravaganza: an art installation in an abandoned auditorium filled with over three-thousand plastic lawn flamingos, all intriguingly illuminated by flashing disco balls and confetti cannons. Now that was worth remembering!

  Arlo had a system of calendar notes and alarms on his smart phone that alerted him all day long. As he admired a particularly attractive Saguaro growing out of the sidewalk planter before him, his phone let out a tinkling chime to remind him of something that he’d forgotten.

  Arlo glanced at the darkened screen with the narrow banner proclaiming that he now had exactly eight minutes to get to his new temp job at the medical billing office. No problem. It was just across the street. Smiling at his reflection in the gleaming black glass of the handheld wonder of telecommunications achievements, Arlo stepped off the curb and got hit by a nineteen-year-old on a white bicycle.

  Four minutes later, he opened his
eyes and stared up at the heavens. The sky above was gray. Gray clouds drifted by, lazily chased by the warm winds that constantly blew in the blasted town. Arlo could feel the tiny gray pebbles digging into his back. His legs. His head. The gravel roads of Downtown were notoriously bad. Potholes were never repaired. Skittering stones were constantly kicked up by pedestrians and bike peddlers. Dropped needles from the cacti prickled underfoot. Right now, those needles and stones were prickling underbody for poor Arlo.

  Forcing himself to sit up and take stock of his surroundings, Arlo glanced around in anticipation of an assembled group of concerned citizens eager to make sure that he was alright. He took one long blink and smiled brightly out at the adoring crowd. The adoring crowd that was not there.

  He was sitting in the middle of the street, covered in bits of gravel and cactus needles, coffee tinted clothing a perfect drab dust color, as oblivious passersby passed right by and bicyclists biked listlessly around never even realizing that a man had been hit and was sitting in shock at the worldwide lack of concern.

  To Arlo, this was hell. Here he was, the bright shining sunny center of his own universe, a perfect photo op of young man struck down in his prime, and no one seemed to notice. He reached for the phone lying upside down beside his left hand. He would take a pic and post it to social media. His adoring followers would surely comment and share it so much that it would go viral. Viral as a plague. And then Arlo would be happy.

  Picking up the phone, he turned it over in his hand to view the beautiful black liquid crystal display… covered with a spiderweb of sparkling cracks. Shattered beyond repair.

  The image reflected back at him didn’t look familiar. Distorted and broken. No fawning fans hanging onto his every digital word. No calendar of upcoming experiences to savor. No hourly alarms to remind him of all of the things that he needed to do. Just a shattered man with a shattered phone surrounded by a sea of souls who didn’t give a shit.