El{ev}ated
Sometimes I take a very complicated route into work.
I walk into a building, walk through an unmarked door and downstairs to the basement, through two sets of double doors. I take a 180 degree turn and enter an angular tunnel whose walls are made of raw concrete, the really scratchy and gray kind. From the tunnel I exit into the basement of my own building and take the service elevator upstairs. The service elevator is dark brown and sad-looking, and sometimes the doors slide back open repeatedly after closing, so you have to coax the elevator a few times, patiently pressing the buttons.
One morning, I arrived to find the elevator door half-open. The car was about a foot below where it should be.
You can't imagine the sense of dread and excitement that came over me. Was it about to plunge down the shaft? Do I dare get inside? I love elevators. No, I fucking love elevators. Ever since I was little I've been obsessed with them. I wanted to know everything. It could very well be my first obsession, the one that started it all. The building I grew up in didn't have them (five story minimum for an elevator to be installed, I duly noted when my father explained it to me), but the ten-story towers my friends lived in did.
The doors of the tower elevators (they had two, one was always broken) didn't slide, instead they swung open. They were quite heavy and had little vertical windows with mesh embedded in the glass. Sometimes we would plaster our faces against those windows in the semi-darkness of the second floor, hoping to scare the people riding inside (kids are inventive little assholes). And if by chance those people were actually headed to the second floor - we usually noticed the elevator slowing down - we would run like hell out of there, screaming.
My dreams are full of elevators and moving platforms. I even have a recurring daytime horror in which I imagine that the service elevator plunges down half a floor below and that there is a rush of cold and dirty water pouring in from above. I'm frantically trying to escape as it fills up the car and weighs it down even more. This is a very vivid daydream sequence for me, and yet I ride that service elevator every chance I get.
I think if I were to lose my job I would probably go to wherever elevator repair people get trained and work with elevators full time. At least for a little while.