It had only been fifteen minutes, and Bob hated them all. He knew every detail of the elevator, from the three buttons which refused to light up when you pressed them to the minute design of diamonds on the worn, red and black carpet. He didn’t know the specific people he was trapped with, but he thought he knew their type, and was convinced, based on the slanting looks and curling lips, that they knew his. Jocular in familiarity, contemptuous, he snapped his gum cheerily, to annoy, and shifted his weight from foot to foot.
Softly, in the background, an instrumental Killing Me Softly played over the tinny speakers.
Bob had not been very surprised when the little door marked EMERGENCY had been opened to reveal loose wires where the phone should have been. None of the other people in the elevator evinced any shock either, but whether that was actual cynicism or an urbane facade Bob couldn’t say. They had all looked at each other and shaken heads, clucked tongues, no longer amazed, it was implied, by the incompetence of Other People. He thought it must have been the rarest of coincidences, that the Brain Trust of the World, the four most brilliant people in the universe, happened to all work in his building. One of the Brain Trust was now busily reading People magazine, slouching against the rear wall of the elevator with the bored insubordination of youth, the implication that he would not even attempt to somehow make the situation better, and that the rest of the Brain Trust ought to leave him alone.
The kid annoyed Bob the most. Probably about twenty-one or -two, he had INTERN written all over him, from the wrap around sunglasses he wore (still) even indoors to the loud music leaking out of earphones, to the combination of decent dress pants and shirt with unlaced sneakers and a worn denim jacket. His cool demeanor made Bob decide that if anyone was going to have to climb into the shaft in a heroic search for help, it would be the kid.
They were suspended between the fifteenth and sixteenth floors, the elevator having squealed and sighed and jerked to a halt a few seconds after the doors had shut on floor fifteen. Bob had accepted this turn of events with cheer and aplomb, because he was now about ten feet away from his floor, twenty seconds away from being off the elevator and into the warm current of a Typical Day. Now instead of floating along on the swells of things that happened every day, he was standing in a box with four strangers who were, if nothing else, not quite as tantalizingly close to a Typical Day.
“They’ve got to know what happened. They must be working on the problem.”
Bob looked up in surprise, at The Librarian. He didn’t know what the woman actually did with her time, but the sharply angled glasses perched on her nose made him think of a librarian. She wore an affected shawl over her shoulders, too, and stood in the center of the elevator in a stiff-backed posture. She wasn’t looking at anyone, and he figured she was speaking just to comfort yourself. He snapped his gum a little louder and replied to the air
“Sure, sure. That phone looks like it was attended to without delay.”
The Librarian looked at him, sniffed, and looked away.
Bob shrugged, chewing his gum. He leaned against the wall of the elevator and stared at the ceiling. He couldn’t even see an escape hatch, a maintenance crawlspace -every movie he’d ever seen that had involved people trapped in an elevator had involved a crawlspace, but he couldn’t see one here. He wondered if there was any way out of the elevator. Or at least one that didn’t involve the elevator splitting open after hitting the basement.
The Obermensch let out an exasperated sigh and began pushing the red button marked ALARM repeatedly. Nothing overt happened, but the Obermensch kept doing it anyway.
“I think the alarm kicks in after you hit the button seventy times or so.” Bob said cheerily, moving his gaze back up to the ceiling of the elevator. “They want to be sure you’re really in trouble.”
The Obermensch hit the button a few more times. “Shut up.”
Bob smirked. The Obermensch was a tall fellow, middle-aged, but bronzed tan in the middle of winter and wearing expensive clothes expensively. His leather shoes were shined to a painful point, his gloves were held expansively in one hand. He smelled expensive and had a haircut that Bob figured easily cost his day’s salary. Having found futility in the form of an EMERGENCY button, the Obermensch glanced at an understated gold watch on his wrist and pulled a slim cell phone from his pocket. Flipping it open with angry impatience, he looked at Bob as he hit an autodial button.
Bob kept his head angled upward, but slid his eyes down to see if this gambit might have any effect on their situation. The Obermensch waited with the phone against his ear for a moment, frowned, and then pulled the phone away and looked at it dumbly.
“I can’t get a signal.” he said evenly.
Bob didn’t comment, seeing no point in stirring up trouble, being an Untermensch himself.
###
The day had begun so normally. Up at seven, in the shower, cup of coffee and the newspaper, crunching baseball scores with childlike enthusiasm. On the bus by quarter-to, reading more sober parts of the paper, feeling rested and continent and counting stops because the windows were steamy and he couldn’t see out of them. Miscounted and had to walk three blocks back to the train station anyway, in the wet cold.
On the subway, he’d fought a grim, quiet battle with a severe-looking middle-aged woman in a dark blue business suit for floorspace. Trying to read the business section of the newspaper was difficult because she felt the need to stand within an inch of him at all times, apparently concerned that someone else on the train might brush up against her. Bob had employed his arsenal of glares, obtrusive newspaper rustling, and inopportune imbalance to drive her away, but she had resolutely refused to move away at all, although she did mutter about him for most of the way. This had cheered him somewhat.
Then, on the street again, avoiding the same shuffling homeless man who accosted him every single morning regardless of the fact that Bob had never, not once, given the man any money. Bob growled at the man, exasperated at the continual assault. Fighting his way through the stomping hordes of slower people, he’d managed to make it to his building only half an hour late, and so had stopped for a large cup of coffee at the little store in the lobby. Lingering over the first sips while waiting for the elevator, Bob had considered the possibility that the day wasn’t going to be such a bad one after all.
And then, after fifteen successful floors, the elevator had made a sound much like a blown rod and had stopped.
###
The Obermensch pounded the EMERGENCY button again. “God-dammit!” he hissed.
Bob looked anywhere else. He fervently hoped they wouldn’t be trapped in the elevator for very long (the coffee being filtered through his kidneys, which he imagined he could feel dripping into his bladder exactly as it had dripped into his coffee pot in the morning, being the main reason as of that moment) but just in case he decided to stop being a nuisance and to keep his sarcasm to himself.
After a moment, Bob opened his briefcase and took out the paper he’d already read on the way to work. He figured there had to be something in it he hadn’t bothered to read. Dutifully, he set about finding it.
###
Some minutes later, the Obermensch began stalking the edges of the elevator, shouldering the other aside rudely as his steely blue gaze swept up the walls and studied the ceiling. Bob was sitting with the paper open on the floor and glanced at the brown wingtips when they came to a halt next to him.
“Excuse me,” the Obermensch said, politely, Bob thought.
Bob looked up. “What are you doing?”
“We’ve been in here over an hour.” The Obermensch said testily. “I’m looking for a way out.”
Bob let his cheerful gaze move from the shoes to the expensive haircut. “You’re going to climb through the greasy shaft and ventilation shafts in an outfit that costs, collectively, a thousand dollars? Fuck, man, don’t wear the shoes if you don’t respect the shoes, you know?”
The Obermensch quite obviously gritted his teeth. “Someone’s got to do something. We can’t just sit here.”
Bob shrugged. “Sure we can. At least, I can. You can choose to climb through the greased innards of the building. It’s a free country, babe.”
The Obermensch grimaced. “Fine.”
The Librarian sniffed the air. “Someone should do something.” To me: “Instead of just sitting there.”
I winked. “Unlike you I have faith in the fine men and women of the various emergency services teams that work this city.”
She looked away. “Whatever.”
Bob nodded and closed his newspaper, having read just about every blurry word on its dim pages. He put the paper aside, on the floor of the elevator, and the Intern reached over immediately and picked it up. Bob let his eyes linger on the kid for a moment, but the Intern didn’t look up again.
“I don’t think there is a way out of this elevator.” The Obermensch said irritably.
“Doesn’t that violate some code or other?” The Librarian asked.
Bob shook his head, and The Librarian narrowed her eyes at him. “What?”
“You think Herr Direktor here knows the elevator code?”
“Shut up.” The Obermensch said. “If you want to just sit on your ass, fine. But be quiet, please.”
Bob shrugged, closed his eyes. Miraculously fell asleep.
###
When he opened his eyes, nothing had changed, and he blinked in dumb thickheadedness for a moment. The other three had also taken to sitting on the floor of the elevator. Bob noticed that their shoes all were almost touching.
“Did you get into the shaft?” Bob asked.
The Obermensch shook his head, scowled.
“How long have I been asleep?”
The Obermensch didn’t reply. The Intern was asleep himself, snoring, his earphones still on. The Librarian looked at her watch and yawned.
“I’d guess about an hour.” She looked at Bob with a blank face. “We haven’t heard anything.”
Bob nodded, stretched a little, and stood up, pushing his hands into his pockets. A slim smile appeared on his face. “Christ, I gotta take a piss.”
A soft moan from the Librarian made him glance down. The Obermensch was looking at him.
“Please don’t.”
Bob shrugged. “In a little while there ain’t going to be any room for discussion, buddy.” he said cheerfully.
“You’re determined,” the Librarian said crisply, “to make this as unpleasant as possible, aren’t you?”
Bob shook his head. “No, I’m determined to not piss my pants just to avoid offending you.”
“Trust me,” the Obermensch said with what might have been an amused ghost of a smile, “that would not avoid offending me.”
Bob nodded in good humor. It was, he calculated, around ten thirty in the morning. He found it difficult to imagine that the entire building had failed to notice a stuck elevator during the preceding hour and a half. He opened his mouth to say so when the Obermensch spoke first.
“I am going to sue this building until they bleed.”
Bob nodded absently and let his eyes wander the interior of the elevator. It did appear to be sealed tight, but every movie he’d ever seen indicated that there had to be a way out of an elevator.
“Forget it, buddy, I looked it over careful.”
Bob glanced down at the Obermensch. “I hope this won’t offend our old and lasting relationship, but I’ll just make my own inspection, okay? Don’t take it to mean I don’t trust you because you look like you haven’t had to change your own oil or plunge your own toilet in about thirty years. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.”
The Obermensch snorted derisively, waved his hand.
Bob considered the panels: they had seams where they met, it was possible they could be removed. He considered the ceiling: the light fixture, certainly, could be dismantled. He considered the floor: the carpeting, indeed, could be pulled up.
Carpeting, he thought. The carpet’s the easiest and least dangerous, so let’s start there.
Before he could actually kneel down and examine the little squares of glued-on carpet, there was a terrible, humming groan which shook the whole car, and the center of gravity shifted sickeningly as the whole elevator obviously dropped a few feet and seemed to twist a little.
Bob looked up and realized that the Obermensch and The Librarian were screaming. He looked quickly over at The Intern. Eyes closed, headphones protecting him, he still slept soundly, or appeared to.
“It’s okay, we’ve stopped moving.” Bob said, holding out his hands as if the two people were on fire.
They stopped screaming, The Librarian with a click and instant silence, the Obermensch simply degenerating into a series of loud exclamations.
“Jesus CHRIST what the HELL is GOING on here! God-DAMMIT someone’s gonna lose their JOB over this, I SWEAR!”
“All RIGHT!” Bob snapped, throwing his arms out. “Enough of that crap, mister, okay? We have to get the hell out of this elevator before it drops fifteen floors and splits open to spill us out like a fucking ripe melon, so quit your fucking volume, okay?” His eyes dropped to the snoring form of The Intern, and with on step he crossed the elevator and landed a solid kick in the kid’s ass.
“Get the fuck up, moron.” Bob snapped.
The kid made some sort of unintelligible noise, leaping up. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” He demanded. He looked around. “Shit, we’re still in here? What the fuck’s the 911 here? Shit.” He rubbed his posterior resentfully, looking Bob up and down. “Fucking asshole.” he muttered.
Bob grinned. “Whatever. This elevator’s gonna fall, kid, and we need to get off. Grouse later. Right now we gotta figure out how to get out of here.”
Quiet solidified in the small area. Bob heard himself breathing heavily.
“Why don’tcha just pop the maintenance hatch?”
Bob looked The Intern over. “Show us the goddamned maintenance hatch.”
The Intern looked around quizzically for a few moments. “Okay. Give me a boost.”
This he said to the Obermensch, who made no move to comply. With an explosion of exasperated breath, Bob stepped forward. “Come on, kid. I gotta take a piss like you can’t imagine.”
He laced his fingers together and bent down a little. The Intern stepped into his palms and hoisted himself up to the ceiling. After a few seconds of feeling along the metal seams, he grunted, twisted something, and pushed the hatch up.
“Mother-fucker.” The Obermensch muttered.
The Intern pulled himself up and braced his feet against the walls, letting Bob stand up. Blackness and a faint echo of something creaking came down from the open hatch.
“Now what?” The Intern said. “I go climb to the next floor? Get help?”
Bob shrugged. “Can you see? You’ll break your neck.”
“Oh, if he wants to go, for Christ’s sake, let him.” The Librarian said.
Bob shrugged again. “Up to you kid. I don’t see how you’d find your way anywhere out there. Doesn’t look very inviting.”
The kid smiled. “No problem, man. I’ll shimmy on up and send in the troops.”
“Hey – sorry I kicked you.”
The kid nodded, pulled himself up, and slipped out of the elevator car, into the darkness. The other three stood and listened. Bob looked anywhere but at the other two, straining his ears.
First, “Damn, damn it’s fucking dark out here, yo.”
Then, “I got a maintenance ladder here, we’re in business, kids.”
Finally, sudden and frantic and much, much louder, “Oh holy shit –“
A gust of stale air moved through the elevator, and then, silence.
“Hey, kid.” Bob called out, squinting into the darkness above them.
There was no reply.
“What the hell just happened?” The Obermensch asked in a quiet, stiff voice.
“Hey, kid!” Bob shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth to amplify. “Hey! You okay!”
“Oh my God…” The Librarian muttered. “Did he -?”
The Obermensch stepped directly beneath the maintenance hatch. “Hey you little asshole say something or by god – !” he shouted, ending in a strangled swallow. “Holy fuck!” He gasped, staggering back into Bob.
“What?” Bob asked.
“I -” The Obermensch gasped. “I saw…something. Out there.” He swallowed. “Flying.”
Bob looked at the Obermensch, then at The Librarian, who smiled a sickly smile. “You’re joking, right?”
The Obermensch, no longer looking at all exasperated, shook his head quietly.
“Christ,” Bob muttered, looking back at the open hatch, “I really got to take a piss.”
###
Bob glanced at his watch again, trying to stretch the muscles in his back without making a nuisance of himself. Fifteen hours. Fifteen hours. He rolled the words around his mind, trying to make sense of them. Fifteen hours in the elevator, fifteen hours breathing the Obermensch’s farts and tracking the Librarian’s perfume from fresh to soured with her panicky sweat. His mind boggled. A sharp spike of headache lanced through him, and he quickly moved on to other considerations.
“We’re not going to be rescued.” He said quietly. In the tiny interior of the elevator, his low tone boomed off the walls.
“Shut up.” The Obermensch muttered.
“What do you mean?” The Librarian said in a harsh voice. “It’s only been a few hours.”
“Did you notice what happened to the wunderkind when he got out there?” Bob snapped. “Something’s happened. Something’s wrong. We’re not going to be rescued.”
The Librarian stood up, struggling onto stiff legs. “What do you mean ‘something’s happened’? There’s got to be a rescue!”
“Why?” Bob said sharply.
She opened her mouth and then shut it, glaring.
“He may be right.” The Obermensch announced. “What I saw out there….there’s no explanation. And we have been sitting here for some time, with no sign that anyone on the outside has noticed us.”
“Here, here.” Bob said.
“But I do agree that we can’t just sit here much longer.”
“I never said we should, just that we weren’t going to be rescued.”
The Obermensch nodded. “As much as I’d like to avoid having to see you urinate into a bottle again – or to have to likewise- I don’t think we have much chance if we exit this elevator, based on what happened to that young man.”
Bob nodded slowly. “Okay. But what other options do we have?”
There were a few seconds of silence. The Obermensch looked at The Librarian and back to Bob. “I’m not sure, to be honest. But we need to start thinking about escaping.”
The word, escaping, seemed to bounce off the walls. They all shifted uncomfortably.
“We have to go out of the elevator.” The Librarian said, her voice a little shaky. “We have to. How else do you escape? You have to leave.”
“But….what about….whatever it is….that’s out there?” Bob asked.
She licked her lips. “If we all went at once, maybe….some of us….one of us….would make it.”
Bob smiled, a sudden and brilliant baring of his teeth. “Feeling frisky all of a sudden, eh? Make it? Make it where, exactly? It’s dark out there, sister. It’s not meant to be convenient. You dive out there with us getting torn apart by whatever’s out there,” he began advancing on her, and she shrank back, “and where are you going to go? Just jump wildly? Scrabble for hand holds in a few desperate, black minutes while something beats its wings around you? The stupidity! Jesus!”
He was an inch or so away when the Obermensch pushed his hand between them and restrained him.
“This is not profitable.”
Bob nodded immediately and turned away. The Librarian stared at him with wide, glassy eyes.
“We’ve got to try something.” She said. “We can’t just sit here.” She took a step towards Bob, and the Obermensch lowered his hand. “I’m going out there.”
Both men turned to her, frowning. “What?”
She nodded. “Obviously someone has to go out there, if for no other reason than to see what’s happening. We all think we know what happened to that kid. We heard something, saw something in that pitch black shaft. But we don’t know. We can’t move forward until we know.”
She looked defiant, and Bob shrugged, smiling. “No one’s gonna stop you, babe.”
This seemed to unnerve The Librarian, and she faltered, looking towards the Obermensch, who also shrugged.
“If you want to commit suicide, my dear, please feel free.”
“Heck,” Bob said cheerfully. “I’ll even give you a boost!”
He moved gracefully, positioning himself beneath the maintenance hatch and crouching down with his hands cupped in front of him. He looked expectantly at The Librarian.
For a few seconds, no one moved. Then Bob laughed.
“Oh! I see, you didn’t mean you. You meant one of us, either the Reichsmarshall here or my distasteful soul. Oh! I’m sorry, I misunderstood. I forgot that you have some genetic reason why you can’t possibly risk your life.” He straightened up and slapped his hand against his forehead in mock amazement. “I can’t -”
“Stop it!” The Librarian said, closing her eyes. “You’re right. I’ll go up and see what’s up there.”
Bob stood for a moment, blank. Then he recovered his grin. “All right.” He crouched down again. “Let’s go then. No time like the present, eh?”
She stepped into his cradled hands and he pushed her up. She grabbed hold of the edges of the opening and pulled herself halfway through. Bob settle her feet onto his shoulders and studiously looked elsewhere.
“I – I don’t see anything.” She called from outside. “Well, I can’t see anything, but I don’t hear anything either.”
“Tell her to give it a moment, let her eyes adjust.” The Obermensch said curtly.
“You hear what the Sharpie said, Matilda?” Bob called up.
“Okay!”
They waited in silence. Bob shifted his weight uncomfortably.
“See anything?” Bob called up.
“It’s an elevator shaft all right.” The Librarian shouted back. “I can see a maintenance ladder of some sort, I think we could climb up or down. I – wait a second -”
“What?” the two men shouted in unison.
Her voice was hesitant. “I think….I think I see something…”
Bob turned his head, locked eyes with the Obermensch.
“Wait….I -”
“Get her down…” The Obermensch said heatedly. “Get her down.”
Bob nodded, and suddenly, her feet were pulled from her shoulders, and a hideous shriek cut the air. Both men moved suddenly, and Bob caught hold of her ankles as they rose through the air. He pulled as hard as he could, strained against resistance for a few moments, grunting with effort, and then fell backwards in a spray of blood, landing hard on the floor of the elevator.
He stared, eyes wide. The corpse of the Librarian lay on top of him, pumping warm blood everywhere, her head missing.
From without, there was a thick, leathery sound, and a screech which faded away.
Bob convulsed, throwing the body off of himself and scrabbling away, panting. Both men stared up at the square of darkness.
###
When both had caught their breath again, The Obermensch gestured at the corpse. “Shouldn’t we put…it…out? Can’t have it….can we?”
Bob pulled himself upright. “No, leave it…her…leave her.”
“Why?”
Bob closed his eyes, wiped blood from his faced with a clear spot on his sleeve. “I don’t know about you….I haven’t eaten all day.”
A moment of quiet. When, a moment later, the lights clicked off without ceremony, there was no reaction from within the elevator.