by Cassi Gray
CHAPTER SIX
I didn’t have long to think about much of anything before the elevator resonated with a low rumble, followed by a gentle shake that vibrated my deep solemn thoughts until they rattled together and disintegrated.
The lights above flickered briefly as they toyed with my secret fear of a power failure while trapped in here. And the floor hummed with a soft but abrupt quiver of the metal and carpet that I now looked down at warily, half expecting it to split in the middle like a trap door and send me screaming to my death.
Knowing full well that getting to my feet would only cause me bodily harm if the elevator decided to do another Irish jig, I remained seated on the pulsating floor.
The strange experience only lasted but a few moments, and I tore my gaze from the floor up to the monitor, somehow still expecting to see the man behind the voice in the little screen. A man’s face didn’t stare back at me, instead the bright glass just spit out more news and blurbs as it had been robotically doing all its life.
Unaware of much grander things that it’s siblings were doing, such as playing movies, or video games. It was doomed to spend an eternity continuously repeating itself with information that the average viewer couldn’t have cared any less for. They only used it to pass the time that was spent in the elevator, or to avoid being spoken to from a stranger or co-worker that they cared for even less than the monitor.
I was both of those people on an average day. But today I clung to the bright images and crisp letters on that monitor like my sanity depended on it.
“Jeremy?” I called out for him.
Yes?
I let out a sigh of relief.
“What just happened?” I questioned him.
I don’t know what you mean Cordelia.
“Like, a minute or two ago the elevator…vibrated and there was a strange sound and the lights flickered. Did you do something?”
It was quiet for a moment, and then he responded.
That was not me. But everything will be okay soon.
There were quite a few troubling things about his statement, and I wasn’t quite sure where to begin.
“So you know what happened?”
Yes.
“What happened?”
It seemed as though I needed to spell every little thing out for him, he needed things said to him in a certain way and very frankly in order to understand my parts of the conversations. It was nerve wracking in the beginning, but I was getting used to it now.
An explosion.
If I hadn’t known any better I would have insisted the elevator dropped out from underneath me again. But I could feel the cold, hard floor pushing against my body with a vengeful insistence, like it refused to be stepped on anymore and was finally pushing back.
I couldn’t form any words, and even if I managed to, it felt like my tongue had swollen to a thick unusable mass in my mouth.
An explosion? Was he being serious? Although he had never joked with me before, my mind couldn’t exactly give in to the reality that he was telling the truth.
How was that even possible? Things like this didn’t happen to me, it happened to other people and I would read about it on the elevator monitor, make faces, laugh, or frown depending on the situation.
This couldn’t be happening.
“Jeremy, I don’t understand,” now I was starting to sound like him, “an explosion? In this building?”
Yes.
The internal arm-wrestling match of if he was joking or not ended abruptly with those three little letters. His answer was so matter-of-factly that I was forced to come to terms that he was being very serious.
I won’t let anything happen to you.
Somehow his words didn’t comfort me, even though I was a hundred percent positive that he saved my life from whatever blast had happened.
I felt my strong demeanor crumble ever so slightly at the relentless needling of worry and panic.
“Jeremy, please,” I almost started to plead, “You need to let me go, I need to get out here.”
It’s not safe yet.
“What’s happening out there?” My voice cracked a little as I tried to sound firm and demanding, but the panic chipped away even more of my calming strength.
I won’t let anything happen to you.
I nearly screamed out of frustration. If he was helping me, why wasn’t he telling me what he was saving me from? Why was he being so secretive? What was he hiding?
I counted to twenty and managed to pick up a few of the broken off pieces of my collected self.
Jeremy remained ever so patient.
“What did you mean ‘everything will be okay soon’?”
He was quiet. I could picture him going back through transcripts of our conversations to see exactly what he had said.
I mean everything will be okay soon. I’m not sure how else to say it. What is wrong now, will not be wrong in the near future.
“That was even more cryptic than usual.”
I am sorry, but I don’t know what ‘cryptic’ means.
That was the first time I had heard him apologize for anything, I was beginning to wonder if he even knew how to.
“Mysterious.” I replied to the second part of what he had said.
I agree.
“What?”
I realized that he was likely responding to the word mysterious, not necessarily the context in which I had said it, “No, ‘cryptic’ is another word for ‘mysterious’.”
I found that explaining myself to him was calming, and this was the longest conversation we’ve had yet.
Why wouldn’t you have just said ‘mysterious’?
“I don’t know, sometimes people say or do things differently, just to be different.”
Jeremy was quiet for a moment, likely pondering what I had said.
Why does everyone want to be different from each other?
“I’m not sure Jeremy, I imagine that everyone has their own reasons.” I replied.
It would seem that people want to be different in all the wrong ways.
Now it was my turn to fall silent and ponder his statement.
He was right. Most people chose to be different by the clothes that they wore, the words that they used, music they listened to, books they read, but so few people tried to be different by doing the right thing, being nice to others, helping their neighbor. We were all striving to be different in society, but for what purpose other than to somehow help our own self?
I looked back at all the times that I substituted a more common word for one that made me look like I read the dictionary with my morning coffee, just so I could be different, so I could appear smarter than I actually was. In no way, shape, or form did that help anyone else.
Just trying to be different, is such a commonly used phrase when someone else questions the purpose of why someone did or said something not common or normal.
But I never really thought deep enough about the why of all of it.
I shrugged in response to my thoughts. And my stomach grumbled in response to the shrug. I patted it and looked up at the time on the monitor, it had been four hours since I had been first trapped in here.
Way past my snack time.
“I’m hungry.” I stated so matter of factly.
That is not something I can help you with.
“You don’t have any cookies to materialize out of thin air for me?” I teased.
No. And I don’t know how to materialize anything out of thin air.
Despite the fact that he was lacking any sense of humor, I still smiled and chuckled.
“You really need to get a sense of humor.” I verbally poked at him.
How do I get one?
The laughter bubbled up inside of me and spilled out between my lips.
You are laughing at me?
Getting my laughter under control quickly because I remembered what he did last time I let it go, I took a couple of deep breaths and replied, “No, I’m sorry. I’m not laugh
ing at you, it’s just,” I paused, “Are you being serious?”
I didn’t know I was being anything other than what I am.
“That hurts my head.” I half responded to him, and half to myself.
You’re in pain?
“I,” Pausing, I realized that this could only turn into a frustrating conversation, or something leading to another giggle fest. Continuing I said, “No. Never mind, I’m not in pain.”
He was quiet once again and I wondered what he was doing. Thinking? Planning? It used to be unnerving that I didn’t know what he was doing when he fell silent, now it was almost comforting. It reminded me of those moments of silence with a loved one or best friend that didn’t feel awkward.
Oddly enough I felt like I was getting to know Jeremy, and despite the terrifying start of this interesting relationship, he didn’t seem to be a bad guy after all.
Naïve, child-like, innocent and caring he certainly was. But dangerous, evil and malicious he was not. I was going off of my instincts on this one since I had yet to actually meet the man behind the voice, but my gut hasn’t been wrong so far.
I just hoped that my gut hasn’t misled me into a fatal mistake of trusting a disembodied voice.
