The doors closed behind Stephanie with a louder clang than normal. The elevator descended for about 10 seconds, then there was a bang, a jolt, and a nasty grinding noise before the elevator stopped moving. Oh god. Stephanie Halder was alone with a stranger in a broken elevator; all she could think of was how she should have taken the stairs, and if she got this job, she would never take the elevator again. Six flights of stairs would be nothing after a couple weeks.
The man in the elevator with her was trying to push all the buttons he could in hopes something happened. No luck. Stephanie pulled out her cell phone, but there was no signal. Finally, a voice came through the elevator speaker, "Hello, this is security, please stand by while we determine the problem." Ugh.
"Oh, come on." The man said, and he leaned his head against the control panel. He dug his hand into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a phone, but he quickly put it back when he realized he also had no service. He proceeded to bump his forehead against the wall three more times for good measure before he turned to face her. It was then that she noticed he was holding a small potted cactus.
"Well, I guess we're stuck. I hope you aren't late for anything."
Her interview had ended 10 minutes ago. Thank goodness this hadn't happened on her way in. "Nope, just going for lunch."
"Late lunch." He replied, "I think at this point I'd just wait another hour and head home early instead if I could. I have to go back to the office though."
She made a non-committal sound in her throat. She didn't want to seem rude, but the stress of the interview had stolen her appetite earlier in the day, and it was catching up with her. She rarely came downtown anymore, and had been looking forward to a lunch at the little café on the corner, but they would be closed at 3:00, so she had less than half an hour to get there.
"Do you think you can call and ask them what's happening?" she nodded towards the control panel he was blocking.
"I'm not sure. We can try. Maybe this button?" He pushed it but nothing seemed to happen. He jabbed it a few more times then looked at her helplessly. "Well, where do you think we are stuck, at a floor but the doors are broken, or in between the middle of two floors?"
She contemplated this for a moment, "I'm guessing in between two floors. We obviously didn't fall too far, but I think the grinding was caused by unexpectedly overshooting a floor when somebody called it."
"Do you get stuck in elevators frequently to know this?" he looked at her suspiciously, as if she did this on purpose.
"No of course not. I just think that the noises would have been different if it was just a broken door."
"Like silence?"
She nodded. "Exactly. Maybe a high pitched squeal."
"Okay. Want to try and force the door open to see?"
Stephanie sighed. Leave it to a man to try and solve everything with brute force.
"There's a camera up there, don't do anything stupid." She hadn't meant to sound preachy, but this seemed slightly better than saying they might get in trouble.
"It's already broken, how much worse could it get?" he pointed out, before adding, "No, pretend I did not say that, it could get lots worse. Lots and lots worse, but we're not going to talk about it." He looked slightly pale and she was beginning to think he was a bit claustrophobic, but maybe that was just his normal colouring.
Placing his cactus gently in the corner, he got his fingertips into the door and was just starting to pull on it when the speaker blared again.
"Please remain calm. We are fixing the problem as quickly as we can. Please do not pull on the doors." Stephanie hated getting in trouble, and instantly felt like she was back in middle school, getting yelled at for breaking a rule. She groaned, and leaned back against the wall. He straightened up and returned to his place against the opposite wall.
"Alright, you win. We don't do anything. But I bet you're right about being stuck between floors then. They don't want us to pry it open and try to climb out right when it starts moving again so we end up getting cut in half."
"Oh gross!" She was starting to feel a bit queasy again. Good thing she hadn't had that lunch earlier. "How long do you think it will be before we get out?"
He seemed to think about this quite seriously considering she was just trying to make small talk. He shrugged and simply said "Dunno" before sitting down beside the cactus. He pulled out his phone again, and must have started to play a game or something because his attention was fixed for the next five minutes. Stephanie took the opportunity to study him.
She had already noticed he was slightly shorter than her, probably only about 5'8", and lightly built. She decided he was naturally pale, he had sandy brown hair that was a bit long and curling slightly at the ends, and was holding his phone with long, thin fingers. He was wearing jeans that sagged a bit and a charcoal Henley shirt under a black rain coat. His brown shoes were slightly scuffed around the toes, but not too worn out yet. Based on the attire she had seen everyone else in the building wearing, she assumed he didn't work here.
Unused to wearing heels of any sort, even though her pumps were merely two inches tall, the balls of her feet ached. Regretting that she chose a pencil skirt instead of pants for the interview, she tucked her legs under herself as she sat down to face him. She knew it wasn't nearly as graceful as she would have liked, but she was glad he seemed to be fully immersed in his game and didn't witness it. She would have taken out her phone and played a game too, but with no idea how long they would be stuck, she didn't want to risk the battery.
She thought about trying to meditate, but figured it might be strange and difficult to do in front of a stranger, so she reclined against the wall and allowed her mind to wander. She was jolted from her reverie by the sound of shouts and power tools. She looked at her watch and realized they had been stuck for nearly thirty minutes already. She stood up as gracefully as a foal to try and call security from the control panel, but as soon as she went to push the speaker button, the security voice came over the loudspeaker again.
"This is security. We think we have identified the problem and are trying to remedy it as quickly as possible. Please stay calm. Is anyone inside hurt or requiring medical attention?"
She turned to look at him. He shrugged. Looking back at the controls, she tried pressing the speaker button and saying "No."
"Thank you, please remain calm."
She pushed the button again, "Can anyone tell us what's going on here?"
The speaker stayed silent this time.
"Worst." She tried not to swear at the wall.
"You know, I bet we could get out of this ourselves if they would let us," a quiet voice from the corner said.
"Oh really? How do you plan to do that?"
"Well, I'm sure we could mission impossible this. Pry open the doors and slither out quickly. There has to be a way to do it."
Stephanie cocked an eyebrow and countered quickly, "Why not climb out the roof? I'm sure there's a secret hatch somewhere we can just climb out of and get to a service ladder in the shaft. We get up to the next floor, and pry open those doors to get out."
This got him to smile directly at her, and it lit his face like a beacon. She noticed his eyes were a light blue-grey. He had an intelligent look about him, and she thought she could see a bit of mischief lurking deep in his eyes.
"How will we keep our balance to get enough leverage to pry that door?" He asked, proving he was at least as smart as he looked.
"Hmmm. Maybe we don't. We just pound on it until someone on the outside does it for us?"
"Ahh, the damsel in distress angle. I like it. You get to shout. They'll be more inclined to help a woman." She couldn't help but laugh at that, and she sat back down.
"Well, I don't feel like climbing anything yet, we'll see how desperate I get later." They lapsed back into companionable silence, broken only by the grumbling noises her stomach started making.
"I guess you should have planned an earlier lunch." He was grinning at her, "then you wouldn't actually be stuck in here either." The smile melted into a grimace.
"It's okay, I do have an emergency snack in here somewhere, I just didn't want to bust it out too early in case we were stuck for the rest of the day."
"That's very... practical of you." He gave her a wry smile.
She rummaged in her bag and she found more than just one snack. "It seems I didn't eat my last emergency snack, and now I have two. Care to join in the feast?"
She pulled out two granola bars and a bag of fruit snacks. She offered a granola bar to him. He looked like he planned to decline it at first, but took it anyways.
Forty minutes later the snacks were long finished and a slightly awkward silence had descended between them.
"So, how do you think they will actually break us out of here?" She began, just as the lights went out, and she shrieked slightly. She heard his breath hiss out quickly.
"Okay, I expected there to be light to get us out. But I guess this makes it more dramatic." She could hear the tension in his voice as he said it and knew he was more freaked out than he was letting on.
"Should we start shouting? Has everyone gone home for the night?"
He glanced at his phone, "Nope, still regular business hours. I wonder what it would be like to be in a working elevator. Or an elevator with lights." And at that, the emergency lights came on, bathing them in a soft yellow light. The relief was evident on both of their faces.
There was the sound of more power tools, which they belatedly realized had stopped for a while. Then another horrible grinding noise, and the doors opened about 3 inches. They both scrambled forward to look out. There were two firefighters out there, but they could only see the bottom third of their bodies. They were stuck between two floors.
"Ten points to you." He looked at her with a smile, and the relief at seeing daylight and getting some fresh air made her nearly giddy, and she laughed hysterically at that. When she finally regained control of herself, she looked at him and found him staring at her with his mouth hanging open.
"Sorry," she added with another snicker, "the prospect of freedom was just so invigorating!" Plus, the air in the elevator had gotten quite stale, so she was now standing just beside the opening. "Hello!" she called, one of the firefighters bent down to see her, "Umm, how much longer until we get out of here?"
"Not sure yet, we need to see if we can move the elevator up or down first now that we can see just where it's sitting."
"So, no chance you're going to let me wiggle out of this little space here and be on my way?" She thought about trying to bat her eyelashes, but remembered she was a horrible flirt.
"Not a chance, ma'am."
"Well, it was worth a shot"
"I could possibly pass you a bottle of water through the opening if you need it. Are there just two of you in there?"
"Yes."
"Give us a minute." And the face disappeared. She turned back to her co-captive.
"Well, I mean, it's no great escape, but I have at least acquired some new supplies."
"Ah yes, but now that the door is open we will have witnesses for our escape through the roof hatch!" he said, pretending to be disappointed.
"Well, darn."
Someone had returned with two water bottles and passed them though. The doors closed again amidst shouts of protest from inside.
In the stress of the situation, she cracked the bottle open immediately and took a deep drink. Her partner shook his head and turned away.
"What?" she demanded.
"Nothing. It's just... we still don't know when we will be getting out of here, so maybe just a small sip would have been better?" He looked like he instantly regretted saying anything, and she narrowed her eyes at him.
"I'll be fine."
He held up his hands in defense. "You're right, you know your body. I'm sure it will be. But under no circumstances are we establishing a pee corner in this elevator."
This caught Stephanie so off guard she couldn't even respond beyond choking out a laugh. There was another grinding noise, and the elevator began to jerk slightly upwards. They hadn't gone far before it stopped again. The noises were louder on the other side of the door, but they sounded agitated now.
Stephanie began to have visions of the whole elevator dropping now that they clearly weren't wedged on something. It had moved, which implied it might move again, and if it moved again, they could very well plummet to their deaths. All she could think about was the story her high school physics teacher told her, about how if he was ever in a falling elevator, he would try to push people down and stand on top of them so that he might survive the impact. This visual was not helping the situation.
"Are you okay? I was joking about the peeing thing. Please don't tell me you have to pee now. I don't think I can handle that." He seemed genuinely worried, and peered at her with concerned eyes.
"No, it's not that." Her voice sounded pinched to her own ears, and then she started to worry that maybe it was going to be that. She tossed the mostly empty bottle onto her bag.
There was another loud crunching noise outside, and the door opened about an inch before the whole elevator dropped. Stephanie screamed by reflex, but she noticed he was white knuckled on the railing, and had a very panicked look on his face, with his eyes tightly closed. The voices outside were even more alarmed, but at least the elevator had stopped moving again.
She could see that the elevator and floor were only misaligned by a few feet now. They hadn't dropped more than four feet. She could definitely jump that height get out of here. They just needed to pry the door open a bit more.
The firefighters face was back. "Is anyone hurt?"
"No, we're fine." She didn't normally use the word fine in the loaded 'girl' way, but she did that time. Things were not fine, but technically he asked if they were hurt, which they weren't.
"Okay, we are going to make sure the elevator is braced so it won't move again, and then we will try and open the doors all the way. Please stand back."
Stephanie wasted no time stepping back and could not tear her eyes off of the door. She couldn't see much out of the one-inch gap, but the sound of power tools was much further away than it was before. Panic seized her, she felt as if everyone outside was ignoring them again, certain it had been ages since they got those water bottles.
A strained voice spoke quietly beside her "Hey, uh, are you okay?"
"Of course I am. Why wouldn't I be?" Stephanie snapped in reply. To his credit he didn't flinch back when she looked at him.
"It's just, you keep spinning that bracelet around, you're chewing your lip pretty hard, and you have barely blinked since you started staring at the door."
That broke her trance quickly. "Oh. Shit." She ran her fingers along her lips and they came away bloody. "Shiiiiit."
"Hey, its okay. Here, you can clean up with this." He bent down to pick up her water bottle, and pulled a folded tissue out of his jacket pocket. "It's clean, I promise," he added with a shy smile. She dampened the tissue with the water bottle, and wiped her lip and fingertips.
"Thanks. Sorry, I'm just a bit stressed right now." She flashed him a smile she hoped didn't look too threatening and bloody.
There was a scratching at the doors, and they both turned towards them again. The firefighters had put some sort of reverse-vice thing in the gap and slowly, so painfully slowly, began to pry the doors apart. It screeched horribly, and when it finally got about 3 feet wide, they removed it and stepped back.
Two firefighters reached in the doorway and beckoned her towards them. She stepped forward, and they each grabbed one of her arms and helped her step out. She definitely could have done it on her own, but after the past hour and a half she wasn't going to say no. Quickly, she was being guided forward by a security guard, and she was aware that a crowd had gathered.
"Oh wait! My bag! It's still in there." The elevator wasn't on fire or anything, so she figured they could send someone to grab it for her. Anyone that wasn't her. She turned around and realized that one of the firefighters was already bringing it to her, and she couldn't even see the elevator anymore.
"Your friend grabbed this for you. Thought you might need it."
"Thank you."
She clutched the handles and let herself be led into a small office for a debriefing, but not before they let her go to the bathroom. She was a bit hasty in that water after all, and really had to relieve her bladder. What's-his-name would have laughed.
Wait, what IS his name? I don't even know. She provided her statement while they verified she was not in need of first aid, then they gave her a juice and some cookies to munch on before they released her to go about her day. No point in lunch anymore, she would just have an earlier dinner. Maybe Mark could get off early... Oh god, Mark!
*****
Author's Note
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