We haven't moved for an hour.
There are seven of us in here, all squashed together.
No one is worried about propriety anymore. A middle-aged woman is rocking back and forth in the corner. She is crying. If she tries her cellphone again, I might smash it, or her.
The man next to me; the one whose immaculately-sculpted hair now hangs in desperate, sweaty strands in front of his face, has finally shut up, finally stopped casting puerile glances at my breasts when he thinks I'm not looking.
"Don't worry," he said, cocksure as hell, when we juddered to a halt an hour ago ñ me already five minutes late for my meeting at Hanso and Klein, "they'll have a team down here in a quarter of an hour. It's the building's policy."
He had pressed the emergency intercom button as if he was Clark Kent entering a phonebooth. No one answered. Clark had obviously forgotten to pack the Lycra.
We all got our cells out at that point: me to call Stefanie at H&K. No one had tried calling loved ones, not then.
But the cells didn't work. 'Network Unavailable'. It was like Schroedinger's cat had played a practical joke on us. The outside world wouldn't exist until the lift's doors opened. Maybe the outside world had gone for good? It was a quantum physicist's worst nightmare.
Then the whole building had shook. The lift had rattled round in its shaft. The fat man in the expensive suit had banged his head on a framed picture of Manhattan taken from the roof. A scarf of blood stretched down his forehead, into an eye, down a cheek, and was turning his shirt scarlet.
Incarnadine?
"Holy fuck!" that was the oriental woman.
We could smell heat. There was a roaring noise coming from above. What could it be?
"Meriel? Meriel? It's Clarice. Are you there? Pick up! Pick up! I wanna speak with Todd! Christ, please pick up! Please!"
"She's not fucking there!" I shouted. I slapped her hard as I could. No one moved. No one tried to stop me. We all felt the same.
"Nigger bitch!"
I nearly laughed. What year was this?
I nearly laughed. But that's when the lift started moving again.
And never stopped.
©Adam Walton
2010
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