The Third Chapter
Gillian dropped her rumpled skirt and blouse into the dirty clothes hamper in her bedroom. Peeling off the disgustingly coffee scented bra and panties, she chucked them on top of both sets of her filthy work clothes. After nine hours at the firm, she was exhausted in body and spirit. Training the overly-helpful and optimistic new hire had been its own special kind of torture.
She opened the door to the bathroom and entered the pristine white space. Cranking the shower knob to hot, she took out her pony tail holder. The heavy locks of dark hair tumbled over her shoulders. Stepping into the shower, she let out a scream so high pitched it was likely only audible to dogs as the freezing cold water hit her skin.
The super hadn’t fixed her hot water heater today like he’d promised he would. Teeth chattering, Gillian squirted body wash on the loofa and scrubbed her body so hard that she wouldn’t have been surprised to see a layer of skin peel off. Washing her hair in record time, she scrambled out of the shower and bundled up in a fluffy towel as she waited for her internal body temperature to return to that of a living person.
Once the involuntary shakes ceased to mere background tremors, Gillian changed into her cream-colored silk pajamas. It may be blisteringly hot outside, but the A/C worked a little too well in Gillian’s apartment and it was currently 60 degrees in her bedroom. Burrowing into sheets and blankets, she curled herself into a tight, shivering ball before finally drifting off into a fitful sleep.
6:00. The urgent buzz of the alarm jolted her awake. Squeezing her eyes shut against the inevitable, she procrastinated for exactly fifty-nine seconds before finally slamming her palm against the off button, ending the discordant blare.
Throwing back the covers, Gillian climbed out of bed even more exhausted than when she’d lain down. Dragging a comb through her rat’s nest of hair, she slipped on her isotoners and walked out onto the tiny patio outside of her room for a quick cigarette.
Being right on the street, her patio was almost unusable. One chair and a rickety table that really needed replacing was all that would fit in the four x four square of swept cement. No rail and no barrier meant that she was essentially on the sidewalk the moment she stepped out of the sliding glass door. Flicking her Bic, she lit the coffin nail as the breeze from a bicycle messenger blew back the tails of her pajama top and made her hair flutter.
“Watch it!” the guy on the beach cruiser shouted as he flew past, narrowly avoiding smashing her toes.
Gillian dropped the lit cigarette in the gutter. The near death by bicycle managed to kill her craving for nicotine at the moment.
As Gillian walked out her front door, she took a moment to appreciate the fact that she was alive. It wasn’t always easy to remember to appreciate the little things. Little things like: not becoming road kill or not shitting yourself to death in the bathroom.
It’s a surprising fact that a lot of well-known people throughout history have died on the toilet. Judy Garland, Dorothy of Oz, died slumped on the can. Somewhere over the rainbow turned into somewhere down the drain for America’s sweetheart. Apparently, even sweethearts aren’t immune to the great swirling drain in the sky.
Java Joe’s Coffee Haus lay along her path to work. Gillian knew that it would take her exactly eight minutes to walk there from her apartment. She knew that between here and there she would pass exactly seventy Saguaro.
Some insane city planner decided that the cacti would be more attractive in the squares of earth cut out of the narrow sidewalks than shade trees. The shade trees in question would have provided, well… shade. That might have been a pleasant respite from the blazing heat that baked down from the full sun onto the hot, cracked concrete. Instead, the evenly placed cactus every forty-two feet offered no shade, but did offer a prickly poke if you were unlucky enough to brush up against one. Since Gillian avoided contact with other people at all cost, she managed to brush up against them quite often.
Every day of Gillian’s life felt exactly the same as the one before. She would dance a fine line of avoiding contact with passersby, try not to get clipped by murderous messengers, and pick which body part was less horrible to be pricked by a cactus as she slithered through the spaces between people. The one part of her day where she took a tiny break between walking and working was when she ordered her morning coffee.
Java Joe’s Coffee Haus didn’t have good coffee. It wasn’t cheap. It wasn’t gourmet. Hell, most of the time it wasn’t even what you ordered. But it was open every day on her way to work. And it gave her something to do with her hands other than wanting to wash them, or wring them, or strangle complete strangers for no good reason. Although, is there ever a good reason to strangle complete strangers? If there was, Gillian would be open to discussion.
At precisely 6:51 AM, Gillian walked up to the black tinted glass door of the coffee shop. The sign hanging on the door read ‘Enjoy the good times while they last because something terrible is about to happen.’
While the words were likely Joe’s idea of a joke, a not especially funny one but hey to each his own, Gillian shivered as she read the words written on the whiteboard in two-inch red letters. She stopped to stare at them for a moment too long. The couple closing in behind her wanted in the shop and she was in the way. They apparently took that as an open invitation to nudge her forward.
Gillian spun around and glared at the middle-aged man and woman in matching Hawaiian print shirts and cargo shorts.
