BETWEEN TWO FLOORS
ALM No.95, November 2026
SHORT STORIES
I could hear the elevator before I could see it.
The old machinery whirred and groaned down the outside hallway. I was claustrophobic, and cleaning it was part of my job.
That morning, Chance, the interim manager, told me it needed a serious cleaning. My coworker was gone, and Chance left to pick up supplies. Around nine, I grabbed my yellow rubber gloves and lavender-scented bleach cleaner, hoping to finish before the Kansas day got hotter.
When the doors opened, the smell hit me: old urine, cigarettes, and stale beer. Stains covered the walls above a wide railing. I braced myself in the doorway and sprayed as far inside as I could, but I couldn’t clean the whole elevator while using my body as a doorstop.
Finally, I stepped inside and tried the stop button.
For about thirty seconds, the doors stayed open.
“Thank God,” I muttered.
Then they closed.
My chest tightened, my heart started beating faster, and my breath came in short gasps. As my vision began to darken, I made a conscious effort to relax. I had been having stress-induced seizures for the past few years. I had to calm down. In that tiny metal box, there wasn’t anywhere to fall without hitting something.
For the next fifteen or twenty minutes, I rode between floors, cleaning in short bursts whenever the doors opened. When they started closing, I hit another floor button. The elevator jerked and groaned like an old roller coaster, its brakes screeching at each stop. Lavender bleach smelled better than what had been there before, but I caught myself almost holding my breath.
Then, during another trip upward, the elevator stopped.
Not at a floor.
I waited for the doors to open. Sometimes this elevator hesitated.
I pressed the floor button again.
The doors stayed shut.
I waited for the machinery to start groaning again.
Nothing moved.
I pressed the door controls, then the other floor buttons, the stop button, and finally the emergency call button.
Nothing.
My walkie-talkie crackled, but the signal inside the closed elevator had always been terrible. I couldn’t understand anyone. Soon its battery began beeping at me.
The light remained on, but the elevator somehow seemed darker.
My head started spinning. I could move my arms and legs, yet none of that mattered.
I was well and truly trapped.
I tried pulling the metal doors apart with my fingers. They didn’t move. I pushed my broom against the ceiling, searching for an escape hatch, then climbed onto the railing, bracing myself with my rubber gloves.
Suppose I did get through the ceiling. Then what?
I had no way to open the doors from inside the shaft. If the elevator started moving while I was climbing out, I could be seriously hurt.
I climbed back down.
I stood in the middle with my arms crossed against my chest, refusing to lean against the filthy, bleach-covered walls. I picked up the dirty paper towels and put them into the trash bag just to give myself something to do.
Every few minutes, I tried everything again.
Buttons. Doors. Walkie-talkie.
“Hello?”
I banged against the metal doors.
Nothing.
Come on, Chance.
It was closer to eleven when I finally thought I heard something outside. I had spent fifteen or twenty minutes riding and cleaning, then more than an hour trapped after the elevator stopped.
I listened.
Metal scraped against metal.
“Chance?”
For a moment, I wondered whether I was only hearing what I desperately wanted to hear.
Another scrape.
“Chance! I’m in here!”
Something appeared between the doors.
A crowbar.
The opening widened slowly. Brighter outside light appeared through the narrow gap, followed by part of Chance’s shoe and his leg. The elevator had stopped about a foot or two below the second-floor landing.
I still didn’t move.
I desperately wanted out, but I wasn’t about to squeeze through an opening that could close on me. Chance struggled until he forced the doors far enough apart and wedged them open with the crowbar.
Only then did I move.
I put my hands on the second-floor threshold and pulled myself up while Chance helped me climb out.
Once I was out on the landing, my legs began shaking. My head spun so badly I had to sit down. Chance brought me water and wanted me to go to the hospital, but I refused. I didn’t want to get into a car or be enclosed anywhere.
I didn’t work again that day.
The next morning, I went back to cleaning and painting apartments. When I needed to carry supplies upstairs, I took the stairs.
I never willingly stepped inside that elevator again.
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