Between Floors

The elevator stopped between the seventh and eighth.

Not dramatically.

No falling.
No sparks.

Just one soft shudder,

then the small red number above the door
stopped knowing what came next.

There were four of us inside.

A woman holding groceries.
A boy in a school uniform.
An old man with one hand
pressed flat against the wall.

And me.

Someone laughed.

That is what people do
when the world briefly stops obeying itself.

The woman pressed seven.

Nothing.

Eight.

Nothing.

Open door.

Nothing.

The boy asked,

“Are we stuck?”

Nobody answered.

The emergency speaker burst into static.

Krrrrsh.

Then a man's voice:

“Please remain calm.”

The voice disappeared.

We waited.

Five minutes.

Ten.

The old man began telling us
about the first house he bought.

Nobody had asked.

He told us the kitchen had one window
and, in winter, the sun came through it
for exactly seventeen minutes.

The woman looked down at her groceries.

She said she had been carrying them
for longer than she could remember.

Then, almost apologetically,

“I keep buying milk.”

The boy admitted
he was supposed to be at school.

I said nothing.

Outside the doors,
somewhere above us,
the machinery kept humming.

A thin electrical hiss
inside the walls.

A sound like a thought
that could not find its ending.

Then the speaker crackled again.

“Help is on the…”

Static.

“…way.”

Static.

“Please…”

Static.

The four of us looked at one another.

For a moment,
I wondered if this was the real emergency.

Not the elevator.

Not the darkness between floors.

But the sudden absence
of everything that usually told us
where to go next.

The boy sat down.

The woman placed her groceries
on the floor.

The old man closed his eyes.

And for the first time in years, perhaps,
none of us had anywhere else to be.

So we listened.

The motor.

The breathing.

The faint electrical hiss.

Four heartbeats
waiting for permission.

Then the elevator jerked violently.

The doors opened.

Seventh floor.

Everyone stepped out.

The woman took her groceries.

The boy ran.

The old man disappeared toward the stairs.

I remained there a moment,
watching the doors begin to close.

They met in the middle
with a soft mechanical certainty.

Up.

Down.

Up.

Down.

Always moving.

I stepped out.

Behind me,
the elevator descended.

The red number changed.

Then it disappeared.

I stood between the open hallway
and the closing doors,

listening to that faint electrical hiss
follow me into the silence.

For a moment,
I could not tell which sound
was coming from the walls

and which one
was coming from me.