I approached the five story warehouse at about seven pm. The lights inside were all off save for the top floor. I don’t know why but I was compelled to enter.
I opened the cold metal door with a loud metallic screech like the door had been rusted over for years. As I walked in I was immediately on a steel grate catwalk with stairs leading downward. The warehouse was mostly empty aside from some crates with white sheets over them.
I walked towards the elevator and got on. It was clean, almost sterile feeling. I noticed a small crank underneath the floor buttons. I was unsure what it did but not in the mood to find out. I pressed “5” and proceeded to ascend upwards.
I arrived at the fifth floor with a “ding” and as I stepped inside I saw an angry Chinese man wearing a grey suit sitting in a wheel chair. He was the type of man that believed everyone was the cause for his predicament. He had a constant angry scowl on his face, where the lines were probably permanent at this point. There were probably close to about 30 people in the room as I arrived. The angry man was yelling at all of them. Apparently no one in his company was performing to his standards. He screamed that they all get back to work and everyone excluding one small female, presumably the angry man’s secretary, fled the room.
The angry man turned to his secretary. She was a tiny female, couldn’t be taller than five feet, small slender build wearing a light blue skirt suit. She was carrying a clipboard with several pages of what appeared to be the statistical down fall of the company.
Just as the angry man started to yell at the female, suddenly an invisible presence was felt in the room. It felt as though all the air was suddenly sucked out and all you could hear was the sound of silence. Suddenly the wheelchair bound man sprang up from his wheelchair and began dancing a waltz around the room to a ballad only he could hear. You could see the sheer terror in his eyes as he danced over to his desk and pulled a black berretta. He continued to dance seemingly possessed by whatever the invisible presence was. He danced in front of his secretary and put the gun up to his left temple.
He pulled the trigger.
The female gasped and fell to the floor, falling on the pistol as she curled into a ball to cry. Almost immediately she sprung back up and looked slowly around the room. She turned her head to the right to crack her neck and then slowly again to the left. She slowly turned to me and in a chorus of male and female voices spoke, “That man, was just awful. It was obvious he needed to die. It’s a shame though. This girl didn’t seem to be involved in the suffering he caused.. and yet. She too must die.”
The girl turned towards me and looked me up and down. “You… get on the elevator… take it to the ground floor and leave this place.”
I slowly backed towards the elevator and opened the door. The girl watched me with eyes that screamed in fear but an expression as cold as ice, pistol in her hand.
As I reached for the buttons to hit the ground floor it dawned on me. The presence intended to throw the female down the elevator shaft. I stopped reaching for the button and looked at the female, “You can’t kill her, she’s innocent to all of this! Why can’t you just let her go!”
The female stared at me as she leveled the pistol at my forehead. The unison of voices stated calmly, “Either you can go down the elevator now. Walk out of this building and forget you were ever here or I can put a bullet in your brain. It makes no difference to me.”
I reached for the elevator buttons and pressed “1”. As the doors closed I watched as a smile spread across the female’s face, the same fear screaming in her eyes. I felt powerless as the elevator slowly descended towards the ground level. Each floor I passed dinged reminding me I was getting that much closer to this females death. I reached for the crank below the buttons and started to turn it. The ceiling of the elevator started to open and I could just barely make out the female staring down the shaft. I could hear the unison voices counting. “3, 2…..”
The ground level announced its arrival with a series of dings and as the doors slowly opened I looked up through the crack in the ceiling to see the female step off the ledge. I cranked the ceiling shut as quickly as I could and ran out of the elevator just as bone crunching thud hit the top. I ran up the steel grate stairs, out the door that screamed as if for the woman’s pain and ran into the night. I ran as far as I could in that cold night. As I stopped to catch my breath, out of the corner of my eye I saw the breath of someone else but when I turned to look. There was nobody there.
Short Stories
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