Hell Is Other People

by Danielle Bellwood

  At the pounding knock on her front door, Gillian opened her eyes and groaned. She’d unplugged her alarm this morning. Well, actually she’d yanked the cord right out of the wall, ending the infernal racket when the eh eh eh blared at her at 6:00 AM. Rolling over onto her side, she’d curled up into a ball and promptly gone back to sleep.

  Gritting her teeth, she threw off the covers and stomped across the room to the door which would lead out to the living room/dining room/kitchen area.

  She threw the dead bolt and yanked open the door open for who else? Arlo, of course. He was grinning at her and holding out her cup of coffee like it was a goddamn trophy or something. Grunting in gratitude, she grabbed the cup and stepped back to let him in.

  He took in the entire scene with one quick glance.

  “You are now entering an area which we call the Twilight Zone,” Arlo’s voice echoed deep and mysterious.

  The interior of Gillian’s previously spotless sanctuary had changed. The plush off-white sofa was now more of a sort of beigy color with darker spots and noticeable crumbs scattered on the cushions. The TV broadcast a screen of black and white static, the sound echoing strangely throughout the small space. And a single cockroach scurried quickly across the lintel for the kitchen.

  “Um… Gillian,” Arlo said, “Are you alright?”

  Her only response was a one shoulder shrug.

  “Okay,” he said, sitting on the sofa. The buttered popcorn crumbs crunched slightly under his weight as he settled onto the soiled cushions. “So, hear me out. We know we’re stuck here… wherever here is. But now, all of a sudden, little things are different. Why? What changed?”

  “Maybe we changed,” Gillian said as she took a sip of the cold light coffee. Somehow, when Arlo got it for her it was always just right. She felt like freaking Goldilocks with the perfect coffee, sipping in satisfaction.

  Arlo cocked his head, considering her response.

  “We changed… Okay, how? In what way?”

  “I don’t know, Arlo,” she said. “I was just being snide.”

  “Maybe this Phil guy will know,” Arlo said. “From what Roger was saying about him bossing around the drones or whatever, it kind of sounds like he’s the person in charge… the CEO or whatever… so maybe we can just ask him. Or better yet, tell him what we want. Hmm… what do we want?”

  “Maybe you should ask him for a brain.”

  “Ouch,” he chuckled nervously. “That’s not very nice, Gillian. I would never say that you should ask him for a heart.”

  She smiled at that, in spite of herself. The smile slid off her face as she looked down at her stained silk pajamas. Gross.

  “I need to shower,” she said. “I just wish that the super would actually fix the damn water heater.”

  “Your water heater’s not working?” Arlo asked, walking across the room to her bedroom and into the small bathroom. “Are you sure? Maybe you just need to give it a minute to warm up.”

  Gillian followed him, absently unbuttoning her pajama top on the way.

  “You think I haven’t tried letting it warm up? Of course, I have.”

  Arlo reached through the curtain to crank the hot knob as far as it would go. He turned around to face Gillian. Her rumpled silk pajama top was open all the way to her waist. Arlo couldn’t help staring at the narrow strip of alabaster skin visible through the opening.

  “Arlo.”

  “Huh?”

  “Arlo!”

  His head jerked up at her commanding tone, eyes locking onto her angry glare.

  “Oh, sorry.” He laughed.

  “Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “The laugh,” she said through gritted teeth. “It’s painful.”

  “Oh.” He looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know. I do it when I’m nervous.”

  “Do I make you nervous?”

  “Well, yeah,” he chuckled, cutting off the sound at her annoyed frown. “I mean… just look at you.”

  She glanced down. The narrow expanse of pasty white flesh above her pajama bottoms almost glowed in the light from the LED bulbs in the vanity mirror.

  “No, I don’t mean now… although yeah…” he laughed again, quickly covering it with a fake cough.

  “Arlo,” she hissed as he fought to cut off the horrible sound. “Get out.”

  “Oh right. Of course. Sorry!” He laughed again, the grating sound making the hairs on the backs of Gillian’s arms stand on end.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and groaned as he scooted out the door. Stripping off her soiled clothing, she dropped the duds on the floor with a plop. When she turned to face the shower stall, her eyes widened in wonder at the plume of steam rising above the white shower curtain.

  “Arlo!”

  He came running back in, the door slamming the wall as he barreled into the room. In his hurry to help a perceived damsel in distress, he slid across the slick tile, and fell against Gillian, pinning her naked body to the sink counter. She let out a tiny “Ack!” as her lower back hit the blunt marble edge.

  “Oh, shit! Sorry!”

  Arlo immediately pulled his hands away from… wherever they’d landed… throwing himself off-balance and only making matters worse as he pitched forward again. They were a jumble of legs and elbows, both reaching and retracting as they fought to right themselves.

  To an outside observer, this might have looked like a romantic entanglement: an attractive young couple with their hands seemingly all over each other; one naked, one with his white shirt damp and sticking to his skin. Steam from the piping hot shower rose and drooped in the bathroom, curling around them like a soft caress.

  “Stop. Touching. Me!” Gillian shouted.

  Gillian, it should be noted, did not like to be touched. At all. She had a pathological aversion to touching which likely arose from some childhood trauma that she couldn’t remember. As far as she was concerned, people’s hands were always coated with dirt, and sweat, and odd smells, and Germs. And no amount of washing or manicuring could ever seem to make that hair-thin line of dirt disappear from under the fingernails. So, when she finally reached out and shoved Arlo so hard that he practically flew backwards and landed in the tub rapidly filling with scalding hot water, desperately yanking down the shower curtain in a vain attempt to save himself, it wasn’t really anything personal.

  The sight of poor Arlo half in/half out of the bathtub with a confused look on his face, eyes unfocused and water pouring off his head triggered a memory in Gillian.

  A tiny light like a refrigerator bulb blinked out a staccato pattern of images in her mind. Like a desperate SOS call. Remember, damnit! For a fraction of a second, she thought it was herself lying awkwardly in the bathroom, head conked, water flooding the floor. But just as quickly, the light blinked out again and it was only Arlo.

  She watched without moving as he managed to drag himself out of the wet tangle of shower curtain and stand up in a bit of a daze.

  “Are you okay?” She wasn’t going to stick out a helping hand but she did hope he hadn’t broken anything vital.

  “Nothing permanent,” he said with a nervous chuckle. “I’ll just…” He squished to the door, warm water oozing out of his shoes while he gripped the doorknob. He had to give the door a good yank to free it from where it had lodged itself into the drywall.

  “Oops. My bad.” He laughed.

  Gillian gritted her teeth against the sound as the door clicked shut behind the hapless hipster.

  When Gillian exited the bathroom a full half hour later, she was rosy from the hot water and every muscle in her body felt relaxed in a way that she couldn’t remember feeling for a very long time. She was wrapped in a fluffy (mostly) white towel. If she took deep, even breaths and focused on other things, she found that she could almost… not quite but almost… ignore the alarming brownish stains that hadn’t been on the towel before today.

  Arlo was sitting in nothing but his boxers on the sofa, bits of crushed popcorn
sticking to the hair on the back of his legs. He was busy writing notes on a scrap of paper that had fallen out of Gillian’s handbag. His soaking wet clothes were draped over the chairs in the kitchen. A steady drip drip pattering onto the linoleum sounded like the blaring of an air raid siren to Gillian.

  “Do you ever just ask yourself, what’s the point of it all?” Arlo asked the room at large as he scribbled away on the paper.

  Gillian opened her mouth to respond. The TV made a faint whine and click. The sound was surprising in the still space. They both turned to watch as the liquid crystal came alive with an infomercial ablaze with bright colors and sounds. The face of an unrealistically perfect model with teeth so white they hurt your eyes filled the screen.

  “Forever Pharma is more than just a pharmaceutical company,” the pleasant woman’s voice said through the speakers, “We’re a family. We care about you. All of our employees love coming to work every day and ensuring that you have what you need to be happy. How can you be your best without the best? From sagging skin to E.D. to depression, we’ve got you covered. At Forever Pharma, you’ll always find what you need to be the best you that you can be… Drugs.” The perfect-looking model on the screen smiled and held up two handfuls of multi-colored pills. Gel caps and tiny tablets fell from her fingers in a rainbow waterfall as cheerful pop music played in the background.

  “What was that?”

  Arlo walked across the room. His hands roamed all over the front and back of the quiescent television, carefully examining every inch of black glass and plastic.

  “What are you doing?” Gillian said.

  “Looking for the camera.”

  “What?”

  Arlo’s eyes were feverishly bright, like a conspiracy theorist who’d just discovered definitive proof that the aliens were, in fact, real and in all likelihood were the father of their baby.

  “I-” he cut off at the sight of her in a towel, long bare legs sticking out from under the edge of the thick cotton that fell to mid-thigh. His mind momentarily turned to mush.

  “Arlo. Focus.”

  “Uhh, yeah, right.” He shook his head and concentrated again on the TV. “How do they know?” he asked. “They always seem to know where we are; what we’re talking about…”

  “Who?”

  “They,” he said. “Them. You know, the ones who are doing this to us.”

  “They? Them? Can you even hear yourself? You sound like a mental patient.”

  “You keep saying I’m crazy but you know as well as I do that this whole situation is crazy.”

  She headed toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” Arlo asked.

  “I don’t know. Out.”

  “Ahem,” Arlo coughed politely.

  “What?”

  “Maybe you should get dressed first?”

  She glanced down at the towel. Gillian was not body shy. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Her hatred for people did not extend to an aversion to flesh, merely an aversion to anyone touching her flesh. But it was probably best to put on something decent if they were going outside.

  “Maybe you should too,” she said.

  Arlo nodded. “You’re right.” Pulling his dripping duds from the back of the chair, he struggled to pull the wet jeans on over his legs.

  Gillian headed back into the bedroom. Rummaging around in the hamper, she dug out her coffee-stained skirt and jacket. She didn’t have another blouse because this hell hole of an apartment was missing even the barest of essentials, but if she buttoned up the jacket, no one would be the wiser. Pulling the skirt and jacket on over her bra and panties, she grabbed her thankfully unsoiled beige high heels from beside the empty dresser.

  She tromped back into the living room/dining room/kitchen and grabbed her handbag off the side table beside the TV. Gillian’s eyes suddenly widened, a look of unadulterated disgust pulling her mouth down at the corners as she pulled out her keys. Three color coded keys hung from a key ring with a bright purple rabbit foot keychain.

  “What. The. Hell?”

  “Oh! Nice!” Arlo smiled and grabbed the furry foot from her outstretched fingers. “A while back, I wished you had a rabbit’s foot because we really needed some good luck.”

  “Arlo,” she said. “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

  “I’m from Mississippi.”

  Gillian closed her eyes in a long blink and sighed dramatically before sliding open the glass door to the patio and stepping out into the street.

  “I know where we can go,” Arlo said as he walked beside Gillian. “I saw a flyer at Java Joe’s for an experience at the convention center.”

  “There’s a convention center?”

  “Apparently. Wanna go check it out?”

  Gillian shrugged. “Why not?”

  The Ultimate Experience

  Arlo stopped in the middle of the street, and turned around in a 360-degree angle to get his bearings. It was easy to get turned around in Downtown. Everything was built to look the same. That seemed to be part of the aesthetic, or lack thereof.

  “Are we lost?” Gillian asked.

  “I don’t…” Arlo started to say, and then his eye caught the edge of the large warehouse tucked into an alley on their left.

  “Aha,” he said triumphantly.

  The convention center was a large building that looked more like a converted warehouse than a designated gathering spot. It was a long, low sheet-metal covered structure with big roll-up doors. Unassuming and otherwise unremarkable… if not for the giant blood red waterfall just to the left of the doors.

  “What. *Urp*.” Gillian dry heaved. “The. *Urp*. Is. That?”

  Her eyes were fixed on the ‘mouth’ of the waterfall, or more accurately the… ahem… what’s a nice word for vulva…?

  “Wow,” said Arlo. “That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “What?! That’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?! I think I might throw up.”

  “It’s art, Gillian. The waterfall is an artistic representation of the river of life. See?” He held up a flyer, presumably from the bulletin board at Java Joe’s, covered with bold red letters that spelled out the somewhat arrogant art installation exhibit title ‘Life and Death: The Ultimate Experience.’

  As Gillian glanced down at the paper in Arlo’s hands, a ruby-colored droplet splashed onto her forearm. You’d think she just got hit with a concentrated drop of death by the way she hyperventilated and rubbed her arm vigorously against her jeans.

  “Oh my god. *Urp*,” She gagged. “Some got on me. I’m going to be sick.” She stumbled backwards, away from the doorway and the red river of ‘water’ flowing from above.

  “You’re overreacting,” Arlo said. “Come on. Let’s go inside.”

  She glanced nervously at the splashing plasma falls.

  “I’ll block it,” Arlo said. He moved to place himself between her and the ‘art’ installation. Gillian shuddered as tiny red droplets pattered against his back and shoulders. She scooted past him and through the wide front doors of the warehouse/auditorium.

  The space just inside the doors was lit up by blindingly white light glaring down from rows and rows of industrial neon tubes. In the distance, the light faded out to an almost pure black near the back of the room. Junk piled all around formed walls that led through the warehouse in a labyrinth of passages through the exhibit. Directly in front of them, near the entrance, was a massive blackboard that looked like it must have come out of an 1800s schoolhouse. In pink pastel chalk, someone wrote ‘Found Art grows like love- by dumping your unwanted crap on whoever will take it. Leave your donations in the bucket.’

  Arlo and Gillian glanced down at the metal pail on the floor beneath the sign. It was half filled with an odd assortment of coins, buttons, crumpled receipts and assorted bits of garbage. Gillian dug a handful of makeup and coins from her purse and dumped it into the pail.

  The labyrinth of found art made Gillian extremely
uncomfortable. Everywhere she turned, there was a pile of junk close to collapsing. She couldn’t have imagined anything more terrifying than being buried alive in a pile of dogeared novels, foam take-out cartons, and Juicy sweatpants. Even death on the toilet would be preferable to that… maybe.

  Around the first bend in the maze, they encountered a wall twenty feet tall and fifty feet wide completely plastered with computer print-outs. A red velvet rope hung from standards six feet away from the wall as though to keep people from touching it. Gillian leaned over the rope to get a closer look at the photocopies. They were all Facebook or Instagram posts, and tweets complete with comment threads. Most of them were birth and marriage announcements or status changes. A few were just pictures of awkward family photos or comics about how work sucks and napping is awesome.

  A bright neon sign stuttered on a pole just off the walkway. Large, glowing blue letters spelled out the word ‘Family.’

  “I don’t get it,” Gillian said after staring at the montage for a minute.

  “What do you mean?” Arlo said. “It’s a perfect representation of the complexities of family social dynamics and how they change over time. See.” He pointed at a large blow-up of a FB status change that just said ‘It’s Complicated.’

  Gillian stared at it. Her only response was a long blink.

  “And here. See this 80s high school yearbook photo with the girl’s face scribbled out with black ink? That’s a classic allusion to unfriending pre-social media. This piece was obviously constructed by an expert social media historian.”

  “Wait… You like this?”

  “Yeah. Why? You don’t?”

  She shook her head, eyebrows raised in disbelief.

  “What do you like, Gillian?”

  “Not this!”

  “Okay… well, I suppose fine art isn’t for everyone. I happen to have a deep appreciation for it, but it’s okay if you don’t. What do you appreciate?”

  “Well…” she thought for a minute. “I like right angles.”

  Arlo laughed.