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

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