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

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.

“Why is that funny?” she said.

“It’s just that I can picture you in your cubicle, crouched down in front of your desk, moving office supplies one millimeter to the left. Every angle has to be exactly right.” He held a hand to his chest as his head tilted back to belt out another bark of laughter.

Gillian’s face was red. “Right angles are mathematically perfect. You say you like art? Well, then you should appreciate that if it’s not a right angle, it’s a wrong angle.”

He roared even louder at that.

“I’m done.” Gillian stomped off, her high heels squeaking slightly on the smooth concrete surface as she marched through the maze of miscellaneous junk.

“Gillian, wait!” Arlo yelled, running after her through the exhibit. “You’re missing out on the whole experience.” He caught up to her and grabbed her arm without thinking.

She yanked out of his grip so fast she almost fell into the wall of pizza boxes and coffee cups piled precariously beside her.

“Don’t touch me.”

“You’re right,” Arlo said as he held up his hands in defense. “You’re right. Totally my bad. I’m sorry.”

Arlo waited patiently for Gillian to calm down. The angry red splotches high on her cheeks faded and her breathing slowly returned to normal.

“I don’t like to be touched,” she said unnecessarily.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

She stared wide-eyed at their surroundings. She’d blown right past the ‘Relationships’ section and now stood in the middle of ‘Romantic Love.’ On all sides, magazines, toys and clothing, movie posters and torn book covers portrayed men and women in intimate embraces and passionate kisses. In attempting to escape Arlo’s grip, Gillian had inadvertently pressed right up against a collection of life-sized cut-outs of burly, bare-chested men in kilts.

“Can I ask you something?” Arlo said. “You can just tell me to shut up, if you want. That’s fine.” He laughed nervously. “But, why don’t you like to be touched? Is it just the germ thing? Or…?”

Gillian didn’t respond. She was staring wide-eyed at the half-naked models printed on the standees. They were only cardboard, but the high-gloss photos were hyper-realistic. It was like a horde of highlanders had suddenly appeared out of the pages of a historical romance and were currently crowded around her, heavy paper elbows bumping against her back and chest. She shrank back, clutching her arms tightly around her, eyes squeezed shut to block out the smothering squad of skirt-clad sex symbols.

“Gillian.” Arlo’s voice echoed strangely off the junk piles. “Are you okay?”

“I have to get out of here.”

“Well, I can see the end of the exhibit ahead. It’s not that far.”

Arlo watched as she steadily became more hysterical, not less, at his helpful observations.

“Remember what you said about we changed?” he said. “Well, maybe you need to drop all of that fear baggage and just chill, you know?”

“I don’t even know what you’re saying right now.”

“I’m saying that you need to stop being so uptight, G.”

“What did you just call me?”

“Like, forget about the germs and stuff,” he continued. “They can’t hurt you anymore, right?” He laughed.

She watched in abject horror as Arlo grabbed a random paperback novel from the rubbish wall beside him and held it out to her.

“Get that book away from me.”

“It’s not a book. It’s a baby step.”

She looked at it suspiciously.

An aspiring young man had written the paperback in question with the unquenchable dream of one day becoming a famous author. For months, he sat hunched over his vintage seafoam green Olivetti typewriter and willed the world inside his head to flow out through his fingers onto the sheets of off-white copy paper. After months of nothing, he felt a sudden epiphany of inspiration one night, and began to type without rest or food for six days straight. On the seventh day, the author sat back and breathed a sigh of contentment. His great magnum opus was complete. He immediately ran to the local copy and print shop and ran off a dozen copies to send out to agents, sure that soon he’d be fighting them off for the chance to submit it to a publishing house.

He waited for exactly one year before self-publishing it online. The futuristic sci-fi/fantasy alien-abduction cross species reverse harem existentialist romance novel was the only one in its genre on Amazon. That made it the number one bestseller. It featured a hand-drawn cover with half-a-dozen brightly colored vaguely humanoid forms doing what could only be described as the horizontal watusi. The ‘bestseller’ sold exactly five copies, four of which the author bought