Elevator Ride 1.1

Perhaps you are familiar with the situation.

I was at this party. It was a great party. We had the run of a grand old building downtown. It was decorated to the hilt, the beer and wine were flowing, and the food was much better than expected. My friends looked their best. And everyone was smiling.

Everyone is smiling. It's disgusting how they can't stop smiling. Like they can put on their fancy clothes and shed all their anxieties and worries at the same moment. Fakers. So insincere. They smile too much. They talk too loud. Their faces are too bright, and too warm, and too close to mine. The party lights hurt my eyes. Garish. Really, the whole situation. Damn. What's wrong with my beer? Someone must be siphoning all the happiness out before they refill my glass. Can't stand the music. So loud and inappropriately upbeat. I'm burning up.

Won't stay a moment longer. Just know I will brutally strike the next grinning face that invades my thoughts with its superficial chatter.

I stumble through the haze of light and laughter searching for a way down. Curse the idiot who put the beer on the top floor. There. The elevator. Don't remember seeing it here before, but who cares?

Caution. Watch your step.

The sign is unnervingly prominent on the wall next to the lift. I pause on the open threshold, suddenly aware that the elevator seems several decades outdated. Slatted gates that open and close vertically. The inside is dark and unfinished with metal screening which allows one to examine the dark dirty shaft where the cage hangs. I'm stuck. One foot on, unsure whether I contain the courage to move forward.

"It's perfectly safe. Step aboard."

He's perched on a stool by off to the side of the gate. He's smiling. And holding a beer casually in his left hand.

"Just examining the... mechanics," I mutter hurriedly stepping aboard. I hate myself for being embarrassed. And I am very. And what a stupid thing to say. Mechanics. Brilliant.

"Not to worry, friend. This lift has been in operation for sixty years."

That's supposed to be reassuring? "Ah," I murmur with the most neutral tone I can manage. I have a very bad feeling. But the cheerful fellow has already shut the wooden gates with a bang. And an instant later I feel the the ground beneath my feet drop with a sickening lurch.

The agonizingly slow rate of our descent is some relief. I look up through open metal of the cage and see the lights dancing out onto the cement walls of the shaft from the receding party. The ecstatic voices of my tormentors echo down, gradually receding with the lights.