The Elevator Story
A short story
by BP Gregory
The Elevator Story Copyright © 2013 BP Gregory
Lunchbox Copyright © 2015 BP Gregory
All Rights Reserved.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This work is copyright apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968. This work may not be reproduced or transmitted in part or in its entirety in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, nor may any other exclusive right be exercised, without the prior written consent of the author BP Gregory, except where permitted by law.
This is a work of fiction. Places and place names are either fictional, or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons either living or dead is purely co-incidental.
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase your own copy from a retailer.
Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. It’s the folk who love books who help writers keep going.
Acknowledgments
The Elevator Story cover image by Norman Chan courtesy of Shutterstock.
Something for Everything cover image by MarcelClemens, The Town cover image by Ortodox, Lunchbox cover image by kamontad999 (along with a millipede by Sakdinon Kadchiangsaen), Orotund cover image by Alex Malikov, and Visit the House image by Peter Dedeurwaerder all courtesy of Shutterstock.
Dedicated to the elevator in my office building. My desk-buddy was trapped in it three times in a month, and I’m pretty sure it eats people.
The Elevator Story
The lady wasn’t going to make the elevator.
She burst down the corridor, heels striking click-click and a shoulder thrust through elevator doors that shut regardless. Jim flinched but of course the mechanical horrors you read about are one in a million; the doors swept back again and released her just as mindlessly as the vice had closed. Where he would have been freaked she was already purse-rummaging, not to squander a moment.
Air whuffed as the doors sealed, restoring pressurised calm. Lavender in the confines – that had to be the lady. Jim’s royal bitch of a heavy parcel grew heavier as dim numbers started ticking up, and he shifted uncomfortably. He’d be glad to be rid of it.
You wouldn’t read about this: the lady was boldly checking his reflection in her compact, even as he looked her over. Jim would set her at forty to a day and precisely turned out, making the best of what the brood mares squandered. Haughty to boot! Jim’s lips quirked when deft fingers dismissively snapped the compact away: well, we aren’t all born on the road to glory. At least with deliveries, all the cycling left him with a butt that squeaked when he walked.
No chops for the meat in the sandwich, their glacial third fellow in broadsheet cuffs. Suit by the house of what every fucking guy’s wearing. Jim’s full hands at least tendered some excuse for not holding the door for the lady, but the suit had blanked the entire human population and any obligation to them off the skin of the earth.
Suit stared up at the numbers with wide blind eyes. Between them they carved the elevator’s space into a trinity so inviolate it was a while before anybody managed to notice that the damned thing had stopped.
Realisation slowly spread, and sidled into awkwardness, until somebody had to say something.
And that somebody was always Jim. He shot the lady a wry shrug. ‘Don’t you hate that?’
‘Only ever happens when you’re busting.’ She responded, rounded caramel tones pegging him as a graceless hick.
But a hick with tenacity, damnit. ‘It’s done this before?’
‘Handful of times. Never with folk in it, though; they prise the doors open to check. You look a little peaky.’
‘For those of us not fond of technology the world is an unkind place.’
‘Speaking of,’ she murmured in an undertone. Their marginalised third had set about mashing the elevator buttons at random. Uninvited, the lady leaned in with exaggerated patience. ‘This one here’s the intercom.’
Suit intercepted her reach to jab the button a half dozen impatient times, hard enough to rattle plastic. No doubt about it: there would be a thunderbolt stroke at the end of this fellow’s corporate rainbow.
Steel twanged ominously in the shaft outside and Jim’s glands irised open, broadcasting his nervousness rather embarrassingly to whoever cared to sniff in the confined space.
Which was nothing compared to what happened next.
Sudden garble erupted from the grille. Modern chaos with a slow yawing groan. Just as suddenly, the courier’s tense stink was no longer alone.
Stubbornly refusing to concede to fate, Suit bent to the speaker. ‘Hello? Is anyone getting me?’
Jim could well imagine the thick listening silence at the other end and wanted to warn Suit to get his face away from it, but his less theatrical partner ventured, ‘Shouldn’t you press when you talk?’
Suit glared around but there was nothing for it now. They existed. He pushed the button. ‘Hello?’
What spewed out was deafening; their listener must have twisted the dial all the way. Jim found himself stammering absurdly, ‘Don’t – don’t tell it we’re here …’ But of course, nobody would ever be told. Pain mewled in his skull. The sound was drilling straight through his eye sockets.
‘Hey! Hey the elevator’s stopped. Come get us!’
A long thoughtful hiss.
Then the speaker clicked off. The sudden tension rang like being struck deaf and the lady slowly took her hands down from her ears.
‘Piece of shit,’ Suit snorted truculently.
Fool of subtlety, Jim took that moment to burst the silence with a gargantuan sneeze. It went off like Fat Boy in the confines, anointing the wall where some vandal had scratched GATE in brutal semi-literate glyphs. The lady shrieked in disgust and then stood trembling with knees squeezed. Jim had just tested her pelvic resolve in a big way.
Of course Suit had an opinion. ‘You know, back in the old country we’d cover our mouth.’
‘Sorry. Caught me by …’ “Surprise” got blown to shreds but at least he got a hand up this time, wiping it rather shamefacedly on his trousers. ‘Doesn’t anyone have a mobile?’ Jim thought of claiming his own as busted, but why gussie the truth with these two? ‘My provider had some issue with non-payment.’
Suit crossed his arms. ‘Don’t have one.’
‘Really?’
Suit had genuinely startled the others, and they seemed to demand an explanation. ‘Don’t want clients thinking they can reach me anytime.’
‘Like now, huh?’ Jim set his parcel down carefully, leaning on the wall. ‘I never met anyone who didn’t want a phone. My niece has one and she’s nine.’
‘Pays her bill, does she?’
‘Well … What do you do when stuff goes wrong?’
‘Like now, huh?’ Suit sneered. ‘I suppose I’d just borrow one.’
‘So really your freedom comes at the expense of those around you.’
Suit turned a martyred grimace on the lady. ‘Ma’am, may I use your phone?’
‘I’ve not been in the habit of bringing it on the thrilling trip to the ladies.’ Her eyes flickered uncomfortably. ‘Doubtless I will in future. Are we totally stuffed? Shouldn’t a courier have a radio?’
‘Legit ones get all sorts of fancy junk. I took bookings via text for a while; now without a phone …’ Jim shrugged. ‘Being late with this today isn’t gonna help. Probably cost me the work.’ He closed his eyes and slid wearily down the wall to si
t on the parcel.
‘Jesus.’ The lady wrinkled her nose and he shrugged.
‘It’s only a job. Plenty more in the sea.’
‘Only if you’ve got a big rod,’ Suit threw in with uncharacteristic humour but the lady refused to be charmed.
‘If you want to avoid a sea in here we’d better get ourselves out.’
‘Hey.’
Jim’s eyes cracked open; Suit was peering down at him.
‘You ok?’
‘Not great,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve been staving off this flu all week. Felt alright until,’ he flapped a hand at the speaker grille, ‘The noise.’
‘That’s awesome.’ The lady was spooked like a strung filly. ‘I don’t need to be catching your germs either.’
‘You heard the lady.’ Suit clapped Jim chummily on the shoulder. What a butthead. ‘Let’s try busting those doors open.’
Jim just sort of feebly hung off his side of the door more than helping. He felt like cooked spaghetti; hard done by spaghetti which didn’t incline him to apply. The lady would have managed far better, but she had already been gender pigeonholed. Just stood by in time-honoured fashion, fiddling with her handbag.
‘A trifle weird don’t you think?’ She observed nervously, to be participating. ‘Three grown adults cut off from the world and the elevator just happens to stop.’
Jim laughed breathlessly. ‘Karmic?’
‘Balls,’ Suit grunted. ‘You said it stops all the damned time.’
‘I mean, I feel like anything might happen. Because we’re isolated.’
‘Two blokes and you’re what, five-nine in heels? Hardly babes