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

phone screen, Arlo caught his reflection staring back at him. Arlo loved his own reflection. He had been diagnosed with what the shrink called a Borderline Personality with a hearty splash of Narcissism. He loved being loved. That was why Arlo posted every minute detail of his (really woefully average) life on the internet. Every artfully designed plate of overpriced delicacies. Every wall of trash that some ingenious entrepreneur convinced the masses was “art” at every experience that wasn’t an experience at all but merely an excuse to pump coins from already cash-strapped souls desperate for affirmation.

Like Comment Share. The mantra of an entire generation.

Averting his eyes to the bulletin board to break the connection with his lovely reflection, Arlo read the words written in red on the white board: ‘You can check out any time you like, but you can never leaf’ with a comically drawn maple tree leaf with a smiley face on it scrawled underneath.

It was meant to be funny, surely, but Arlo did not laugh. His nervous giggle did not rear its reasonably attractive head to break the awkward silence as he waited patiently just outside the door. Closing his eyes, he listened to the subtle sounds drifting out from inside the coffee shop: People talking softly. The thunk of a coffee cup coming to rest on a counter. The clack clack of heels against scratched Pergo planks approaching.

Arlo drew in a deep breath and braced against the glass. At the first hint of a shove, he yanked the handle outward toward himself and stared triumphantly at the shocked woman framed in the doorway.

“We meet again,” Arlo said dramatically, “For the first time.”

“What the hell?!” Gillian yelled. “Are you insane?”

“Yes,” Arlo nodded sagely. “But also… not insane at all. I know where we are. We’re in… the Matrix.”

Gillian stepped around him, coffee in hand, and continued walking down the cracked sidewalks crowded with suddenly still walkers. She didn’t seem to notice how strange it was that everyone and everything around them was frozen in time. But Arlo noticed. There- a bike messenger who’d mowed him down as he crossed the street. There- a man in a yellow hat who’d asked him the time. There- a kid with a melting ice cream cone who’d cried as the pink froth dripped down his hand to the ground… frozen halfway between now and forever in the blazing heat baking the bizarre scene.

Arlo scurried along beside her, dodging the silent strangers who came to life as they passed- a curious mix of still life ahead and unhampered movement behind as the players went on with their day in the wake of Gillian and Arlo’s passing.

“Did you hear what I said?” Arlo asked.

Gillian ignored him. She didn’t like people. And people who spouted Science Fiction and conspiracy theories- least of all.

Arlo stuck by her side as she crossed the street. “Street” being a pretty liberal term for the one long lane that ran through Downtown. More like dirt road covered with a healthy layer of gray gravel. No cars ever went down the lane through Downtown. Only bicycles. Bicycles of every hue imaginable- white, yellow, green, black, blue, and red. A veritable rainbow of color that splashed against the bland background of the world they lived in. And of course, the people. Men, women, children in duds of pale, washed-out tones that appeared even more drab by the occasional pop of color from a bright blue scarf or yellow hat.

The sliding doors of the office building where Gillian worked glided open on greased rails to greet them. Stepping on the tan tile in her tan heels, Gillian began a beeline for the restroom, Arlo at her right.

He smiled triumphantly as she stopped, mid-step, just outside the door to the unisex. She pivoted to face him with a strange expression on her face.

“I don’t need to use the bathroom,” she said softly.

Arlo nodded, a nervous giggle escaping even though he’d fought tooth and nail to hold it back.

“Neither do I,” he said.

“Do you know…” she said with a far-off look, “A lot of famous people have died on the toilet…”

“I did know that,” Arlo said. “There have been a few kings throughout history that were murdered on the toilet actually. I think one was even stabbed with a spear from underneath...”

Gillian’s eyes opened wide as he recounted this brief, horrific history lesson.

“Pretty bad way to go, for sure,” Arlo said, “Alone. But at least a death like that is remembered. Worse to be forgotten.”

“Dying alone doesn’t frighten me,” Gillian said.

She glanced at her wristwatch. Fifteen minutes to get to her desk. She spun on her heel and marched toward the staircase that would lead to her floor.

“Where are you going?” Arlo asked, trotting to keep up with her stilted pace.

“To work,” she said matter-of-factly.

Who was this guy? her sneer seemed to say.

“But…” he muttered.

His steps slowed and he stopped on the landing. Gillian hurried on, leaving him behind in the beige stairwell that led up and down to nowhere in particular. He had been so sure that she saw.

Taking a deep breath to center himself, Arlo took a quick mental stock of his current situation. Somehow, he had broken out of the loop. Gillian, on the other hand, was apparently still sipping the powdered fruit drink and blundering blindly through the maze. He would need to go through the motions of another today. How I long for yesterday.

Arlo trudged up the steps to the second floor, turning down the first hall to the left and approaching the rotund receptionist waiting for him to enter into the bubble of her existence. The moment he passed over the halfway demarcation of door to desk, she looked up, cat’s eye spectacles facing him as she smiled mechanically.

“Hello. How may I help you?”

Her nametag read, ‘Bertha Brobdingnagian.’

“Arlo Black to see Supervisor Goodspeed,” he said for the who really know how many nth time.

Bertha punched a button on the multiline phone and repeated his words back into