The Elevator
Midnight came and went. It was past the time when the voice from the Elevator said it would be back for them. It’s not that anyone was looking forward for the time to come but by now most had become resigned to the conditions laid out as reality.
There were only five of them in the group waiting in the small hallway for the elevator to return. The day had started out innocently enough when they had arrived to work about the same time, more or less. There was a group of ten ahead of them and Jack had been talking to a friend who made it on with the ten. He was urging him to get on insisting that there was room enough for one more and that he would fit.
Jack though was a big man and decided to stay behind and to wait for the Elevator to return.
The Elevator started on it’s journey and everyone was watching the dial assuming it would carry it’s passengers straight to the top floor, the tenth floor as this was the express Elevator.
It didn’t make any stops in between. It went straight to the top. At least it was supposed to. It always had but, this day was to be different. When the Elevator made it’s start, it didn’t go up to the top, it didn’t go up at all. Huh.
The Elevator actually went down, but there was no “down” as far as the small group knew. Oh, there may have been a basement alright but it was only accessible by the freight elevator and used only by the maintenance crew. Yet, this Elevator, this express Elevator, to the top, started going down. Huh!
How odd they all thought.
So, with a collective sigh, the small group of five would wait their turn trying not to question why, after all, was it not their job just “to do or die”. Huh.
As the Elevator went down, the dial above the outside doors went left, counter clockwise and stopped where might have been an imaginary one. A minus one, actually.
They could hear the bell sound, “Ping”, as it’s doors opened below then they heard another sound. A disturbing sound, like a grunt-“ugh”, and then a “no-no”! Huh.
They could hear the doors close, go down another flight, stop at the imaginary -two and “Ping”.
The doors opened again. This time they heard, “no-please- no, agh”. Oh…
Well, this was beginning to get quite unsettling to the little band of five so they tried to exit the hallway through the door they had come in from. No good. It wouldn’t open. It was locked. “How could this be”, they thought. “This door was never locked, not at this time of the morning”.
The Elevator now was down to floor -five. They must have missed a couple floors, preoccupied, you know.
Doors open. Ping. A scream. “No-no-please no. Let me explain. Please…”. Uh oh.
The band of five, the “band of others”, started yelling for help hoping against hope that someone, somewhere would here them and let them out of this nightmare situation but,no good.
No one there.
Then they heard a voice, a sort of high pitched nasal voice that seemed to be coming from above the Elevator doors, from the floor dial. “Patience please, only three more bodies, I mean, three more floors to go”. “Down please”. “Certainly sir”.
Finally, the Elevator reached bottom, the-tenth floor. They could hear sounds still but now they were completely muffled and unintelligible. They watched the dial above but this time when it started from the bottom it just suddenly arrived at their floor, ground zero. No sounds, no stops in between then, ping. Humm…
The doors opened-slowly-very slowly and… nothing. No one. No thing. Huh.
The small group huddled against the far wall in the hall as much as they could but it was a scant ten feet across if that. No one moved. No one got on the,
A voice. The Elevator voice again. But no one was there. No person or-or thing. None that they could see anyway.
“Please get on for the express to the tenth floor. Next loading will be at twelve-midnight. This Elevator is departing and will return at twelve midnight. Please be prompt.”
Whoosh!
Down. Huh.
When Synapses Go Bad 