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

Every day of Gillian’s life felt exactly the same as the one before. The angry buzz of the alarm on her nightstand would go off at 6:00 AM. At precisely 6:01, she’d slap the off button and force herself to get up even though she felt like she had gotten zero rest. She’d step outside for a quick smoke and try not to get murdered. And then she’d get ready for work. She worked a just above minimum wage entry level job for a medical billing firm that she hated.

Her boss, Roger Goodspeed, gave a whole new meaning to the word boring. The man was nondescript, monotonous, and clueless. Not the best combination for a team leader but someone higher up had determined that he was the man for the job.

It took Gillian precisely forty-two minutes to get dressed, apply her makeup, pull her hair up into a tight bun, and march purposefully through the front door of her apartment. Eight minutes later, she grasped the handle of the darkly tinted glass door to Java Joe’s Coffee Haus. The sign on the white board before her read ‘Every day is another opportunity to ruin your life all over again.’

She blinked at it for a moment before passing through the door to the coffee shop. Joe Jr, the pimply teen son apparently of Java Joe, asked her for her order although it was always the same.  A medium latte with a single shot of espresso. Skim milk. Iced. The barista carefully noted the order.

“Name?”

“Gillian. G.I.L.L.I.A.N. Gillian.”

He nodded. “Got it. Just be a sec.”

She sat on the edge of one of the bar stools jammed around the tiny tables that filled the room. Swinging her foot lightly back and forth in her high heels, she tried to connect to the WIFI. Yeah, that was wishful thinking. Oh, well. No news was good news, she supposed.

She was watching the counter like a hawk when she saw Jr slip the white paper cup onto the pick-up counter and nod in her direction. Hurrying to grab the cup, she could feel the heat baking the skin of her palm through the paper. Definitely not iced. Twisting her hand at the wrist, she read the name printed on the side in black sharpie.

‘Kill him’

Gillian couldn’t help but laugh at that one. It was almost as if he read her mind.

She lifted the cup to sip the coffee and almost burned her lips off. The coffee was so hot that it felt like her insides were melting. A thin dribble of hot coffee dripped from her chin to land on her white work blouse.

She grabbed a wad of recycled brown paper napkins and dabbed hopelessly at the faint brown spot. Well, she could blot it better when she got to work. Lifting her shoulder slightly to hitch her purse strap back onto her shoulder, she bumped the glass door with her hip.

Just as the door began to swing out, someone shoved it back against her from the outside. Gillian gripped her coffee cup to keep from dropping it and must have gripped a little too firmly, because the little plastic top popped off so hard it flew toward the ceiling. Flaming hot coffee shot up like a brown lava fountain, raining back down on her, sizzling where it struck flesh.

Gillian didn’t cry out in pain. She was in too much shock for that. Frozen in place like an ice cube as the boiling hot coffee flowed down her chest to her underpants, dripping down both legs to puddle in her heels. Suddenly cooled coffee dripped from her toes to the scratched linoleum planks.

Gillian was making a sound like a wounded animal or a horde of angry bees buzzing, if bees knew how to curse in a dozen different languages.

“Whoops! What a bummer! Sorry about that!” said Arlo.

He let out an awkward chuckle even more distressing to Gillian than the coffee squishing between her toes. He was laughing?

“Let me just…” He grabbed a handful of napkins and reached toward her like he intended to blot the Lake Eerie sized coffee stain on the front of her… well the front of her everything.

“Leave it!” she snapped.

A wave of something rolled over Gillian at this point. Not a physical, tangible wave. It wasn’t something you could see or touch. But it felt heavy somehow. Oppressive. To Gillian, it felt like when you suddenly remember that you forgot something of vital importance but have no idea what that was. The soggy hairs on her arms stood on end and she shivered slightly even though it was so hot that the cacti were wilting outside.

The feeling vanished as quickly as it appeared, and Gillian stared angrily at the overly helpful, awkward guy with the messy bedhead and high tops peeking from the cuffs of jeans way too tight.

She sighed and dropped the now empty coffee cup to the floor where it rolled through the brown puddle to bump against the hipster’s Chucks.

“Hey, litter bug. You shouldn’t just drop your trash like that…” He glanced at the name printed on the side of the cup. “Kill him… Ummm. What kind of name is that?”

Her eyebrows rose.

“I’m Arlo.” He stuck out a hand in her general direction, a wide, innocent smile on his face.

Gillian shoved past him out the door. She now had ten less minutes to get to work and she still needed to change her clothes. Luckily, she kept a spare skirt and a clean blouse in her locker. She did not, however, keep a spare pair of pumps.

Her leather heels made a cringeworthy squishing sound as she scurried down the cracked sidewalk. Swerving to avoid making contact with the hordes of pedestrians milling past like a herd of cattle, she stepped one foot off the sidewalk to the street below. Immediately jerking her foot back, she cursed silently as the bicycle messenger zoomed past, a spray of dust billowing up from the gutter where her foot was .01 seconds earlier.

Gillian