Hell Is Other People by Danielle Bellwood (books under 200 pages .txt) 📕

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.

At one minute to work time, Arlo stood morosely beside Supervisor Goodspeed. “Call me Roger,” the supervisor said. Arlo would try to remember. They were about to meet his training officer. ‘Officer’ wasn’t really the term that Supervisor Goodspeed Call Me Roger had used for the employee that Arlo would shadow throughout the work day. But Arlo thought of the as yet unseen employee as an officer because Arlo felt like he was in prison. A colorless tan prison filled with tan furniture, walls, and carpeting. His coffee tinted to tan clothing matched the prison/office space so perfectly that he seemed to blend right into the walls and carpeting. One more bland piece of furniture that no one would notice. The horror.

“Jolene,” Roger’s bland voice droned from the door to the bland cubicle before him.

“Yes, Roger,” a faintly familiar female voice drifted out.

“You have a trainee.”

Arlo looked upon the face of his jailer. A face with perfect makeup, perfect hair, and perfectly clean, not at all coffee tinted clothing.

“It’s you,” he said.

A nervous titter escaped his throat at the strangeness of seeing her again so soon.

“Do you remember me?” he asked hopefully.

Please, God, let someone somewhere remember.

Arlo couldn’t imagine anything worse than being ignored. Or forgotten.

“Arlo,” the ice princess said.

“Yeah!” Arlo smiled wide, pleased. “That’s my name. Don’t wear it out.” He winked at her.

He’d never been very good at flirting.

Gillian slapped him in the chest with a manila folder. “Copy room. End of hall,” she practically growled.

Ooh. Feisty. Nice.

“Oof,” he said, puffing out his cheeks and pretending to be hurt by the folder. Women love it when guys are funny.

He laughed lightly at his joke and turned on a heel to walk the length of the hall to the copy room. Today was looking like a good day.

Remember

Arlo stood stock still and watched the woman in the black skirt and jacket cross the last square of sidewalk to enter the door of the coffee shop. She seemed oblivious to his stare. Oblivious to the crowds that acted like players on a stage, moving carefully to the left or right to intentionally block her path, forcing her to cringe and speed toward her caffeinated destination.

Arlo watched the white-haired couple in the loud lounge shirts with the dancing hula girls follow the woman through the door. Pulling his phone from his pocket, he checked (for the twentieth time) the perfect picture that reflected back from the mirrorlike surface of his perfectly uncracked phone screen.

Arlo had not imagined it. Of that he was certain. For the first time in… forever… he remembered something.

Every day of Arlo’s life felt exactly the same as the one before… until yesterday. Yesterday, all of his troubles seemed so far away… until Arlo discovered a secret. Something of vital importance. Something that made him question if his reality/life was just an illusion. A nightmare.

Approaching the mirrorlike surface of the black glass door that looked almost exactly like a man-sized version of his