The Thirteenth Floor

Mikal had always believed that fear was a choice—until the day it became a cage.

As a boy growing up in Lusaka, Zambia, Mikal had been fearless in most ways. He climbed mango trees with reckless abandon, raced his friends through dusty streets, and laughed off ghost stories told under flickering streetlights. But one summer afternoon at the Lusaka City Library changed everything. He was nine years old, chasing a book on architecture—his budding passion—when he stepped into the library’s ancient elevator. The doors clanged shut, and the lift jolted upward. Then it stopped. The lights flickered, the fan whirred to a halt, and the air grew thick. For fifty-three minutes, he was trapped in that metal box, alone, with only the creaks of the cables and his own ragged breathing for company. When the doors finally opened, he stumbled out, vowing never to step into an elevator again.

That vow shaped his life. Mikal became the stair-climber, the one who arrived at meetings slightly out of breath but always on time. He planned his days around buildings with accessible stairwells, memorized floor plans, and politely declined invitations to high-rise venues. His friends teased him, calling it a quirk, but Mikal knew it was more than that. It was survival.

He landed his dream job at Dlamini & Greyson, one of Johannesburg’s most prestigious architectural firms, the decision to relocate from Zambia to South Africa was a very easy one. He made one thing clear during his interview: his office had to be on a floor he could reach by stairs. The firm, eager to secure a talent like Mikal—whose portfolio of sustainable urban designs had already won awards—agreed. They placed him on the 5th floor of their sleek, 30-story headquarters. Five floors were climbable. Safe. Perfect.

For three years, Mikal thrived. He designed community centers that blended tradition with innovation, sketched blueprints that earned nods from senior partners, and built a reputation as the firm’s rising star. The stairwell became his sanctuary, a place where he could think, plan, and escape the metallic hum of the elevators he passed each day. Life was good.

Until Friday the 13th.

The morning began like any other. Mikal arrived at the firm’s glass-and-steel tower in Sandton, Johannesburg’s financial heart. The lobby buzzed with the usual chaos—executives tapping at phones, interns juggling coffee trays, and security guards scanning ID badges. Overhead, a digital ticker announced scheduled power tests for the building’s electrical systems. Mikal barely noticed. Power tests were routine in a city where load-shedding was a fact of life. He tightened his grip on his takeaway coffee, bypassed the crowded elevators, and jogged up the five flights to his office.

His desk overlooked the city skyline, a view that reminded him why he loved architecture. Buildings were stories told in concrete and glass, and Mikal wanted to write his own. He spent the morning refining a proposal for a low-cost housing project, his pen moving as fast as his thoughts. By noon, he was deep in a flow state, oblivious to the world.

Then his manager, Thandi, appeared at his desk. She was a no-nonsense woman with a sharp mind and a sharper tongue, but she had a soft spot for Mikal’s talent. “Emergency client meeting,” she said, her tone brisk. “Boardroom. Top floor. Now.”

Mikal’s pen froze. “Top floor?”

“The 30th,” Thandi confirmed, already turning away. “Big client. They flew in from Dubai. Don’t be late.”

His stomach twisted. “Can I take the stairs?”

Thandi laughed, assuming he was joking. “It’s thirty floors, Mikal. Be practical. Meeting starts in five minutes.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but she was already gone. Mikal stared at his desk, his pulse quickening. Thirty floors. He could run it, maybe. But five minutes? Impossible. He glanced at the clock. 11:55 a.m. The client was waiting. His job—his dream—depended on this.

He stood, legs unsteady, and walked to the elevator bank. A small crowd waited: colleagues, interns, a delivery guy. Mikal’s heart hammered as he joined them. The elevators had been running all morning. People rode them every day. It would be fine. Just one ride.

The doors slid open. Mikal stepped inside, his throat tight. Two colleagues followed: Sarah, a junior architect with a penchant for loud laughter, and Vusi, a senior designer known for his dry wit. They barely noticed Mikal’s tension, chatting about a project deadline as the doors closed.

The panel lit up. Floor numbers ticked upward.

6... 9... 11...

The lights flickered.

A low groan echoed through the shaft. The elevator shuddered, then stopped.

Darkness.

“Not again,” Vusi muttered, his voice cutting through the silence.

Mikal’s palms were slick with sweat. His breath came in shallow bursts. He pressed himself against the wall, the cold metal grounding him for a moment. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, drowning out Sarah’s attempt at reassurance.

“We’re probably between floors,” she said, her tone calm but strained. “Happened to me last year. Just press the call button.”

Vusi fumbled with the panel, but nothing responded. No lights. No buzz. The buttons were dead.

“I can’t breathe,” Mikal whispered, his voice barely audible.

He slid down the wall, crouching, his hands gripping his knees. The air felt heavy, like it was pressing him into the floor. He tried to count—one, two, three—but the numbers slipped away. His mind spiraled back to the Lusaka library, the flickering lights, the suffocating walls. He was nine again, trapped, helpless.

Sarah knelt beside him. “Mikal, hey, look at me. We’re okay. It’s just a glitch.”

But something was wrong. The air shifted, grew colder. The darkness seemed to pulse.

Then the lights flickered on.

For a split second, everything looked normal. The panel glowed, the mirrored walls reflected their tense faces, and the hum of the fan resumed.

But the floor number wasn’t right.

It read: 13.

Mikal’s blood ran cold. The building didn’t have a 13th floor. Like many high-rises, the architects had skipped it, jumping from 12 to 14 to avoid superstition. He’d studied the blueprints himself. There was no 13.

Sarah frowned. “That’s... not possible.”

Vusi pressed the buttons again, harder. “Must be a display error.”

Then the doors creaked open.

Beyond them stretched a hallway of flickering fluorescent lights, peeling paint, and a low, unsettling hum—like bees trapped in jars. The air smelled of damp concrete and rusted metal, a stark contrast to the polished marble of their building.

“Where are we?” Sarah whispered.

Mikal stood, his legs trembling. Something pulled at him, an inexplicable urge to step forward. He crossed the threshold, his shoes echoing on the cracked linoleum floor. Sarah and Vusi followed, their faces pale.

The elevator doors slammed shut behind them. Mikal spun around, but the doors were gone. Just a blank wall, as if the elevator had never existed.

“What the hell?” Vusi’s voice cracked. “This is a maintenance floor, right? Some kind of glitch?”

“Maybe,” Sarah said, but her eyes betrayed her doubt.

They walked. The hallway stretched endlessly, its walls lined with unmarked doors. Some were ajar, revealing slivers of darkness. Mikal’s skin prickled. He thought he saw movement behind one door—a hunched shape, too quick to make out. Behind another, a faint sobbing echoed, then stopped.

“This isn’t right,” Vusi said, his usual composure fraying. “We need to find a stairwell. An exit.”

But the hallway seemed to shift. Corners appeared where none had been. The hum grew louder, burrowing into Mikal’s skull. He blinked, and the floor tiles changed—now they were the checkered pattern of his childhood home. A cracked photograph of his late father materialized on the wall, its frame warped. His old school shoes sat in a corner, laces frayed.

The hallway was reading him.

Sarah grabbed his arm. “Mikal, you’re shaking. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice hoarse. “But this place... it knows me.”

A door creaked open ahead.

A child stepped out. Thin, ghostly pale, dressed in a school uniform from decades ago—navy blazer, scuffed shoes. He stared at Mikal with hollow eyes.

“You came back,” the boy said.

Mikal stumbled back. “What?”

“We waited for you.”

The lights flickered. The boy vanished.

Sarah’s grip tightened. “Who was that?”

“I don’t know!” Mikal’s voice rose, panic clawing at him. “I’ve never seen him before!”

But that wasn’t true. Not entirely. The boy’s face was familiar, like a memory buried deep. Mikal’s mind raced, pulling him back to the Lusaka library, to the boy he’d been, trapped and terrified.

Vusi pounded on a door. “There has to be a way out! This is insane!”

The hallway twisted again. The walls seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting. Mikal’s notebook from his first year at university appeared on the floor, its pages open to sketches of buildings he’d never built. A voice whispered his name, soft and insistent, from behind a door.

“Stop!” Mikal shouted, his voice echoing. “What do you want?!”

Another door opened.

Inside was the elevator from the Lusaka City Library. Same scratched panel. Same stale smell. Same dim, flickering light. And inside it: a boy. Ten years old. Crying. It was Mikal.

“You left me here,” the boy said, his voice trembling.

Mikal’s knees buckled. “No, no, I got out! I lived my life!”

“But you never let me go,” the boy said, stepping forward. “You carried me. Every stair you climbed. Every elevator you avoided. I stayed. I grew here. With the fear.”

The boy’s form shimmered, stretched. He grew taller, his features sharpening. He became a man. He became Mikal.

“You fed me,” the figure said, its voice now a mirror of Mikal’s own. “Every panic attack. Every sleepless night. I became real.”

The figure lunged.

Mikal screamed, his vision blurring. The hallway dissolved into darkness.

When he opened his eyes, he was in a hospital bed. The sterile smell of antiseptic filled the air. A nurse adjusted an IV drip, her expression kind but professional.

“You’re awake,” she said. “You collapsed in the elevator. Stress-induced episode, the doctors think. Maybe a panic attack. You’re lucky your colleagues were there.”

Mikal’s throat was dry. “What happened?”

“They said the elevator stopped for a minute or two. Power glitch. You passed out before it reached the 30th floor. They carried you out.”

Sarah and Vusi visited later, their faces etched with concern. “You scared us,” Sarah said. “One minute you were fine, then you just... collapsed.”

“It didn’t open,” Vusi added. “The elevator. We never left it. You were muttering about a hallway, a boy. It freaked us out.”

Mikal nodded, but their words didn’t settle him. He knew what he’d seen. The 13th floor. The boy. Himself. It wasn’t a dream or a hallucination. It was real—more real than the hospital bed, the beeping monitors, the sunlight streaming through the window.

The doctors kept him overnight for observation. They prescribed rest, therapy, maybe medication. “Stress can do strange things to the mind,” one said. Mikal didn’t argue. He just wanted to go home.

Weeks later, Mikal returned to work. The office felt different now, like a place he no longer fully belonged to. His colleagues were kind, but their glances carried questions they didn’t ask. Thandi called him into her office, her tone gentle.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” she said. “But if you need time, or support, we’re here.”

“I’m fine,” Mikal said, and he almost believed it.

He threw himself into his projects, sketching designs with a fervor that bordered on obsession. But the stairwell no longer felt like a sanctuary. Each step reminded him of the hallway, the boy, the fear he’d carried for years. He couldn’t outrun it anymore.

One morning, he stood in the lobby, staring at the elevator bank. His finger hovered over the call button. His heart raced, but not with the same paralyzing dread. Something had shifted inside him, not because the fear was gone, but because he understood it now.

Fear wasn’t just a feeling. It was a living thing, one he’d fed for years with every avoided elevator, every anxious thought. The 13th floor—whether real or imagined—had shown him that. It had forced him to face the boy he’d left behind, the part of himself he’d never let heal.

He pressed the button.

The doors opened. He stepped inside, alone. The panel lit up. The doors closed.

As the elevator rose, Mikal braced himself. Not for a flicker of lights or a creaking stop, but for the weight of his own courage. He would ride it. Face it. Not because he was fearless, but because he refused to let fear define him any longer.

The doors opened on the 5th floor. Mikal stepped out, his breath steady. For the first time in years, he felt free.