elevator

No light is a light.

I walked into this elevator every day knowing that one day it would fail on me. The way it shuddered and moaned as it took me to my destination--for me and no one else--I knew it would be the end of me. So taking the lift became something of a religious experience for me. I was facing my death every day.

I came into the office late one night because I had some extra work I wanted to do before the weekend, and I stepped into the elevator with the sense that it would never reach the top, that this time it would kill me. It turns out I was almost right. It lurched to a halt well before my tenth floor office, but the door opened. I stepped through--what else could I do?--and instead of an elevator shaft, I found a vast, dark expanse. I could only see a few feet in the darkness, but there appeared to be catwalks and scaffolding, at least enough to walk on.

I walked carefully, but the floor was never treacherous. Eventually the elevator was a tiny speck of light in the distance. I kept walking. It must have been miles now, and my legs were too tired to go on, so I sat down and rested. Was there a point to this, or, for that matter, an end to it?

It hardly seemed to matter. When I'd rested I got up and continued, now taking random turns, losing myself in the lightless expanse of walkways. I felt like I should have been frightened or worried, but I felt nothing of the sort. Instead I felt a confidence I never knew in my daily life, and had a spring in my step I hadn't felt since I was young and full of idiot optimism. I was taking impossible steps in an impossible place, but even that couldn't stop me.