Elevators Are Death Boxes

“This is my worst nightmare,” complained Liddy as she pressed her forehead against the wall of the elevator. It had stopped mid descent and she was stuck in it. She hated small spaces, she had claustrophobia and just a general fear of plummeting to her death in a box that could crush her if it went all wonky. 

Absolutely nothing good came out being trapped inside an elevator, hovering ten floors up from the ground level, dressed in the gaudiest bridesmaid dress she’d ever seen. Her best friend’s cousin was getting married. She apparently wasn’t friendly enough with anyone, so she had to hire people to be in her wedding party. Liddy was one of those people. 

She’d taped herself into the orange muddy colored dress about thirty minutes ago, when she thought she had all the time in the world to prepare at the hotel before the ceremony. But no, she had to get trapped in the death box with her hair in rollers and no makeup on, aside from base foundation. She was going to die looking like Caspar the friendly Ghost’s twin sister, after she’d rolled around in a pit of mud. 

“If I took off this dress, would you be uncomfortable?” Liddy asked her elevator companion, a man from the twelfth floor, who looked like he was just going to the gym for a quick workout. He looked good, he wasn’t going to look like a mud pie threw up on him. “I just don’t want to die in a shit colored dress. I mean, if it had been baby pink, or blue, or red, or any other color, I wouldn’t mind it. But it’s literally the color of shit.” 

“Please don’t take off your dress,” spoke the twelfth floor man, his voice rather smooth and deep. Oh well, his voice was like a sultry angel’s. Liddy wouldn’t mind his being the last voice she heard. If the operator service woman would stop asking her to ‘remain calm, emergency services have been called, remain calm, emergency services have been called’. She knew that, she’d called them! 

Liddy could feel her chest restricting with every panicked intake of breath, unable to remain calm. This was her worst nightmare. 

“I’m a firefighter,” he informed her, patting her shoulder and trying to get her to look at him. As she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, noticing his smile as he took a deep breath. He was coaching her, or trying to. She did as he did, her breaths shaking as she did so, but he just kept nodding his head. “We’re going to be fine,” he smiled, lines forming at the edges of his lips and making Liddy feel slightly weak at the knees. How long had he lived in her building? 

Not the time to be swoon, Liddy, you’re about to die! 

“This isn’t even my first halted elevator,” he went on, making Liddy look at him shocked. Why was he so calm? How could he remain this composed when it wasn’t the first time he’d been trapped in one of these things? “Granted, the first time I was responding to a call.” 

For almost ten minutes, he explained to her what happened during that call, ending it with everyone getting out and they were all safe. He’d managed to get her to sit down, inhaling slowly and exhaling. Liddy might have been falling in love with him the whole time. “So, you see, totally nothing to worry about,” concluded her companion, nodding his head and smiling widely. He really thought that cleared it all up. God bless attractive firefighters, but Liddy felt even more anxious and panicked now. Maybe because she’d convinced herself she’d never know what it would be like to kiss this man before she died. Or maybe it was the frightening grinding noise that the pulley system that was holding them up was making. 

“Why is it making that noise?” she asked, terrified for her life more than ever before as they both looked up at the hatch above their heads where many an idiot would have climbed out into the shaft in those action movies. Not me or Cute Guy from the twelfth floor, Liddy thought. 

“Ah, well, it’s probably just the mechanisms...trying to pull us back up.” Although his tone wasn’t very certain, Liddy wanted to take his word for gospel. He had truthful eyes, eyes that made her think he didn’t know how to tell a lie. They were the most beautiful blue a man’s eyes could get. She was envious of them, a little, because she had brown eyes, nothing fancy, nothing extra, just brown. And she’d always had a thing for blue eyes. 

But she also had a thing for men who looked like they would tell her no lies, when actually, every word out of their mouth was a lie. 

He probably had no idea what was happening. He probably wasn’t a firefighter. And that story he told her about the woman and her son trapped in the elevator, it was probably a lie, too. He didn’t save lives for a living. 

Don’t let the muscles fool you, Liddy told herself.

Ten more minutes passed, Liddy was no longer having a panic attack, but she felt extremely lethargic and in need of a large...stiff drink. Her companion offered her water, but she was now too scared to drink it. 

In the last ten minutes, she convinced herself that not only was he lying about his profession, but he’d probably caused the elevator to halt. 

A string of young women had been attacked around their apartment building and they’d all reported that a good looking guy had done it, and now, Liddy knew it had to be him. The last had even stated that he had blue eyes… Or was it green? She couldn’t remember and she frustratingly couldn’t get onto the internet to check, there was barely enough signal to call 911. 

“Where were you going dressed like a mud pie?” asked her companion, most likely the serial attacker from the area. Liddy checked for her purse, hoping she had her pepper spray in the purse or her taser. She’d never used them, but she was sure the pepper spray would only backfire on her. The space in the elevator was too small. And the taser was too scary to use. She’d probably taze herself. 

“A wedding.” Her voice was still shaking as she sweated, beads of perspiration dripping down her forehead and falling in her eyes. 

“Let me guess, bridesmaid?” he chuckled, nodding his head and sighing heavily. “My sister chose the most unsightly color and style for hers, too. Like allowing the bridesmaids to look good would be the worst thing in the world,” he rolled his eyes. 

“Well, I mean, it is the bride’s big day, she deserves to look the best,” defended Liddy. She’d already decided that her bridesmaids could pick their own dresses, however. She wouldn’t force a frilly, puffy mess like the meringue mud pie thing she was wearing on them. She liked her friends and, who knew, maybe they’d find their future significant other at her wedding. That wasn’t going to happen. Because they were going to die here! 

“Don’t freak out,” the guy told her as the elevator began to move, but in an odd and frightening way. Liddy and her companion let out a gasped scream as the box jerked and she went sprawling across the floor. “It’s okay, I told you not to freak out.” 

“You screamed, too, so don’t act all high and mighty!” Liddy shouted at him, gripping the bars around the center of the elevator, bolted to the walls with fancy looking screws. “I don’t want to die! I want to live, and I want my bridesmaids to look amazing at the wedding! Hell, I’ll even hire good looking servers, too! God, please, don’t let me die!” 

“Liddy, you’re not going to die,” laughed her companion, clearly not understanding that she knew he was full of lies! 

“You don’t know that! And how do you know my name?” she threw at him as the elevator made a shrieking noise, only for Liddy to shriek with it. Her companion’s eyes went wide as he grabbed her hands, pulling himself closer to her and praying loudly. 

The elevator was moving now, going down. But none of the lights were on inside of it. The red flashing light that had been signalling there was some kind of malfunction had gone out. 

Liddy joined in his prayer as they knew sooner or later the box would crash and that was it. Even her companion had resigned himself to the inevitable. They were dead. 

Screeching metal and the smell of burning rubber filled the elevator as it jerked one last time, throwing both Liddy and her companion against the mirrored walls of the elevator. She didn’t even have a second to gasp this time around as all of the air was forced out of her lungs. Beside, her companion held her hand still but the other was pressed to his head. A warm trickle of sweat dripped down the side of her face, dripping into her eye again, and made everything red.

It took her a moment to realize it wasn’t the red flashing light and that it was blood. She was bleeding. 

Arm outstretched, her companion squeezed her hand to try and gain her attention, to make sure she was still conscious. But the loud siren-like alarm that was going inside the elevator made Liddy unable to hear his words. That or it was the knock to her head that caused the ringing in her ears, everything sounding fuzzy and her eyesight going blurry. She couldn’t focus. Even as her companion shook her shoulder. 

Liddy blacked out for a minute or two, reawakening to the sight of her companion over her. She let out a scream, a limp arm coming up and her hand smacking his ear. He let out a groan as he fell backward, and then another man appeared over her. 

Oh my god, did the attacker have a partner? 

“Miss, can you hear me?” asked the second man but she soon realized that he was...an emergency service worker. A firefighter, to be exact. The black and yellow of his uniform was the giveaway. “Miss, I need you to tell me if you can hear me,” he repeated and Liddy nodded her head. 

“Yes.” That was all she could manage. She looked around her as she slowly sat up, even though she was told not to, and saw her companion with a firefighter sitting next to him, the firefighter laughing. Why was he laughing? “Did I die? Am I dead?” she asked but the firefighter only shook his head, laughing a little. 

“No, you’re very much alive,” he assured her. 

“What happened?” she asked, noticing that she was no longer inside the elevator. They were in the front lobby of her building. Police officers were near the glass doors, two of her neighbors were hanging around trying to hear what was going on. 

“Well, it appears that there was another attack in the building,” he explained as she looked over at her companion. She immediately told herself she knew it was him. “They caught the guy though, but not before he messed with the generator for the building.” 

“Wait...what?” she questioned, shaking her head and wincing at the pain that was strobing down her neck. 

“The elevator power was shut off and it took us a little while to get it back up and running,” he went on, rubbing his hands together and looking over at her companion. “But you’re lucky you were in there with him. Or...maybe not? What did Wyatt do to make you slap him like that?”

“I thought he was the serial attacker,” Liddy spewed before she was able to stop herself. The firefighter let out a loud laugh at that and Wyatt, her previous companion, got up and walked over. He looked offended, very much so.

“You thought I was the one attacking all of those women? Why?” he demanded to know. But Liddy knew how foolish she’d sound if she told him, so instead, she just shrunk into herself. 

Over the course of a few days, following the incident, Liddy found herself anxious to get back in that elevator. However, she couldn’t handle another day of climbing all of those flights of stairs to get to her apartment on the fourteenth floor. So, she gave in. 

She boarded, listening to the gossiping older women who’d boarded with her, whispering about how the attacker had actually been someone who lived in the building. And much to her dismay, they mentioned her. How she’d mistaken that sweet and handsome firefighter from the twelfth floor for being the attacker and how she’d smacked him when they were trapped inside the elevator. 

Stopping on the third floor, the elevator doors opened and in waltzed… Wyatt. Oh good god, why? If he noticed Liddy, he didn’t make any indications of having done so. The older women very obviously looked him up and down, commenting on how preposterous it was that Liddy mistook him for someone who’d harm young women. “You know, dear, you should be thankful that men like him live in this apartment building,” one woman said to her. 

“Oh yes, they make it a much safer place to live,” the other assured her, nodding her head and smiling at her friend. 

His ears had picked up the conversation and he was listening, smirking to himself at the ego boost they were giving him. 

“I bet you wouldn’t mind getting stuck in here again with him,” the shortest of the two said and Liddy bristled as she heard his scoff. 

“Actually, that’d be my worst nightmare,” he told the women, smirking over at Liddy as she cowered into the corner. Could this whole thing be any worse?