Details

Elevator

• Alternative Names: Death Longing
• Author: Atul
• Genre: Fiction, Thriller, Horror
• Year: 2023
• Status: Completed

Summary:

It was just another day for Jane, but what she saw during her ride home changed her life.

Chapter 1

Jane wasn’t been feeling well since the evening. She had too much to drink, in sorrow, joy and a bunch of other feelings drive her to this one hell of a bar. They named it quite meta “The Bar”. Like every other person in the world is trying to come up with a name so simple that anyone can remember. Not so long ago, when you had to name something, they used their name and initial but now it’s all “meta”.

Jane is a manager at a law firm in London, paid well enough for all her booze to wash down all the anxiety for the day. This was her usual routine, work hard during the day and sip a few drinks before going home. She always walk herself home every night but today she wasn’t feeling right, something was off by a lot.

She felt light, light as if she had no weight of her body to feel, it was not the booze. It was as if the surrounding is full of mist and foul. She never remembers feeling too unearthly, not that she can even remember any day from start to finish. But it was different, different indeed.

She was standing outside “The Bar” and couldn’t remember how she ended up outside or even went in. All she remembers is how she decided on going early home and watching some TV before bed. It was getting dark. She wanted to go home desperately. She waved her hand for a taxi but with no luck. There were multiple taxis with no passengers, driving on the same road, but no one would stop. She looked left and right. Hoping for something, she spotted a taxi at the end of the block. She rushed towards it. The taxi had no passengers.

Jane asked the driver to take her to 20th Street, Block 8. But he wasn’t listening, in fact, he had not noticed her all this time. She ignored her and sat in the back seat in the window seat looking at the road. The Taxi stink of all the awful things anyone can think of. But all she wanted was to go home.

She said to the driver who now was looking at “The Bar”, “Take me to 20th Street”. He ignored. He circle around the car until he sat in the driver’s seat. He ignited the car and started driving. She sighed, “Off we go!”.

The driver seemed quite a rude person, he did not ask her again where to go nor he answered her. She kept thinking of all the possible situations on this ride going wrong, it’s weird that even in such a situation the mind will come up with million possibilities of something so simple. Like you live a hundred deaths created by your own mind. But her thought was disturbed, the driver was now shouting at people on the road.

“Get away from the road! Find some other taxi to die, Idiots!”, he continued, “This city is filled with people with useless jobs and getting drunk all night”.

Jane felt offended, “You cannot blame the people, having a job is exciting and stressful. This is the only way for stress relief”.

He didn’t reply, maybe he didn’t agree with her self-pity comment.

She didn’t bother continuing, she was more relieved at heading towards 20th Street. The day had been tiring and full of surprises for her. All she wanted was to go home and get some sleep. Tomorrow was another big day. She wanted to store all the energy that is left in her, which wasn’t much.

As the taxi entered 20th Street just before the corner, Jane saw the area was lit with blue and red colours, cops or ambulance or could be firefighters? She jumped from the sit to take a better look, the road was crowded in circles. People gathered to a get peek at the scene of an accident. An accident in this neighbour is quite rare, she thought.

The taxi driver was already out of his seat to get a peek of his own. He didn’t even bother to get paid. She wanted to get out so bad, but her stomach churned, she was scared, immobile. Taking two full breaths she lifted herself out of the sit and started approaching the scene.

As she walked up to the crowd. She knew something awful has happen. She wanted to look so bad that she could push all of them to make a way but didn’t have to. The police started to clear the crowd in an attempt to pick up what seems to be a body of a person. A body of a woman. She saw a woman the same as her age, flat on the ground, face on the road, blood pooling around her head.

She took a look at the face, which seems similar, so similar that she cried in a small voice, “It’s me!”. And no one can hear her.