Hell Is Other People, Danielle Bellwood [best novels to read .TXT] 📗

again, the grating sound making the hairs on the backs of Gillian’s arms stand on end.

She squeezed her eyes shut and groaned as he scooted out the door. Stripping off her soiled clothing, she dropped the duds on the floor with a plop. When she turned to face the shower stall, her eyes widened in wonder at the plume of steam rising above the white shower curtain.

“Arlo!”

He came running back in, the door slamming the wall as he barreled into the room. In his hurry to help a perceived damsel in distress, he slid across the slick tile, and fell against Gillian, pinning her naked body to the sink counter. She let out a tiny “Ack!” as her lower back hit the blunt marble edge.

“Oh, shit! Sorry!”

Arlo immediately pulled his hands away from… wherever they’d landed… throwing himself off-balance and only making matters worse as he pitched forward again. They were a jumble of legs and elbows, both reaching and retracting as they fought to right themselves.

To an outside observer, this might have looked like a romantic entanglement: an attractive young couple with their hands seemingly all over each other; one naked, one with his white shirt damp and sticking to his skin. Steam from the piping hot shower rose and drooped in the bathroom, curling around them like a soft caress.

“Stop. Touching. Me!” Gillian shouted.

Gillian, it should be noted, did not like to be touched. At all. She had a pathological aversion to touching which likely arose from some childhood trauma that she couldn’t remember. As far as she was concerned, people’s hands were always coated with dirt, and sweat, and odd smells, and Germs. And no amount of washing or manicuring could ever seem to make that hair-thin line of dirt disappear from under the fingernails. So, when she finally reached out and shoved Arlo so hard that he practically flew backwards and landed in the tub rapidly filling with scalding hot water, desperately yanking down the shower curtain in a vain attempt to save himself, it wasn’t really anything personal.

The sight of poor Arlo half in/half out of the bathtub with a confused look on his face, eyes unfocused and water pouring off his head triggered a memory in Gillian.

A tiny light like a refrigerator bulb blinked out a staccato pattern of images in her mind. Like a desperate SOS call. Remember, damnit! For a fraction of a second, she thought it was herself lying awkwardly in the bathroom, head conked, water flooding the floor. But just as quickly, the light blinked out again and it was only Arlo.

She watched without moving as he managed to drag himself out of the wet tangle of shower curtain and stand up in a bit of a daze.

“Are you okay?” She wasn’t going to stick out a helping hand but she did hope he hadn’t broken anything vital.

“Nothing permanent,” he said with a nervous chuckle. “I’ll just…” He squished to the door, warm water oozing out of his shoes while he gripped the doorknob. He had to give the door a good yank to free it from where it had lodged itself into the drywall.

“Oops. My bad.” He laughed.

Gillian gritted her teeth against the sound as the door clicked shut behind the hapless hipster.

When Gillian exited the bathroom a full half hour later, she was rosy from the hot water and every muscle in her body felt relaxed in a way that she couldn’t remember feeling for a very long time. She was wrapped in a fluffy (mostly) white towel. If she took deep, even breaths and focused on other things, she found that she could almost… not quite but almost… ignore the alarming brownish stains that hadn’t been on the towel before today.

Arlo was sitting in nothing but his boxers on the sofa, bits of crushed popcorn sticking to the hair on the back of his legs. He was busy writing notes on a scrap of paper that had fallen out of Gillian’s handbag. His soaking wet clothes were draped over the chairs in the kitchen. A steady drip drip pattering onto the linoleum sounded like the blaring of an air raid siren to Gillian.

“Do you ever just ask yourself, what’s the point of it all?” Arlo asked the room at large as he scribbled away on the paper.

Gillian opened her mouth to respond. The TV made a faint whine and click. The sound was surprising in the still space. They both turned to watch as the liquid crystal came alive with an infomercial ablaze with bright colors and sounds. The face of an unrealistically perfect model with teeth so white they hurt your eyes filled the screen.

“Forever Pharma is more than just a pharmaceutical company,” the pleasant woman’s voice said through the speakers, “We’re a family. We care about you. All of our employees love coming to work every day and ensuring that you have what you need to be happy. How can you be your best without the best? From sagging skin to E.D. to depression, we’ve got you covered. At Forever Pharma, you’ll always find what you need to be the best you that you can be… Drugs.” The perfect-looking model on the screen smiled and held up two handfuls of multi-colored pills. Gel caps and tiny tablets fell from her fingers in a rainbow waterfall as cheerful pop music played in the background.

“What was that?”

Arlo walked across the room. His hands roamed all over the front and back of the quiescent television, carefully examining every inch of black glass and plastic.

“What are you doing?” Gillian said.

“Looking for the camera.”

“What?”

Arlo’s eyes were feverishly bright, like a conspiracy theorist who’d just discovered definitive proof that the aliens were, in fact, real and in all likelihood were the father of their baby.

“I-” he cut off at the sight of her in a towel, long bare legs sticking out from under the edge of the thick cotton that fell to mid-thigh. His mind momentarily turned to mush.

“Arlo. Focus.”

“Uhh, yeah,