Chapter 8 – Rule #8 - Don't jump in the elevator

This next one is easy to follow, but a lot of people would think it’s safe if they didn’t know about the rules, not to mention a lot of fun.

Rule #8 – Don’t jump in the elevator.

I remember doing this one as a kid, jumping up and down to see what it would feel like, if maybe it would make me experience low gravity like an astronaut on the moon. As a little kid, the elevator didn’t even notice. The problem is, when more people decide to get involved.

A call I was responding to a while back was to rescue a group of college students who had been out drinking and decided to jump in the elevator for fun after visiting the pub. They caused the whole thing to break down and ended up stuck in it. As I’ve described before, this can be a very dangerous situation. Especially if someone decides they want to try and be a hero. If that temptation arises, just remember rule number four, and stay right the fuck where you are, or you’re already in trouble. Just make sure you have a working cell phone with you in case the emergency call button doesn’t work – which it often doesn’t – at least in my town anyways.

So anyways, these kids were stuck in the elevator and I’m outside the doors telling them to calm down, not to panic. They’re screaming and screaming about how “there’s not enough air” and “they’re going to die in there” and “WHY WON’T I JUST LET THEM OUT!?” and I’m trying to be polite but they’re just so loud.

I can only work so fast. Sure, I know they’ve been in there for two days without food or water and the fan is now broken and two of them have passed out and one is no longer breathing, but I’ve called the paramedics and that’s about the extent of my abilities as far as those things go.

The door finally budges after a swift kick to the butt of the pry-bar with my boot. I manage to get the thing open and hands pull me inside and into the darkness as I scream. The doors rattle shut behind me.

“Hello?” I ask, to the seemingly empty elevator car. It had sounded like a dozen people in there just a minute before. And then I remembered the accident. When the group of college kids had died in this same elevator shaft ten years before. The cable had snapped. They had been jumping in the car and the cable had snapped. It hadn’t been completely their fault. It took a lot of negligence on the part of the building owner, the tenants, as well as the elevator repairman who serviced it for something so catastrophic to happen.

A soft and delicate pair of hands suddenly reached out from nowhere and in the darkness began to caress my neck, then my chest. The hands probed downwards, teasing, exploring.

Then another pair of hands was on me, and another, doing the same thing. Enticing scents invaded my nostrils. Sex pheromone perfume, and something else more unpleasant underneath. A voice whispered in my ear.

“You like it? Of course you do. Stay with us.”

I felt my belt being undone and then the buttons of my pants and my fly. Part of me had a bad feeling about all of this. The other part of me thought, holy shit –a threesome? Wait, no, a foursome!?

“Uh huh,” I said feebly, my knees buckling.

Suddenly the lights flickered on and I saw the horror surrounding me. From out of the walls emerged decaying hands, rotten and missing large pieces where the flesh had become macerated and fallen off, which reached out and were grabbing me greedily. There were dozens of them, the wrists sloughing off skin which slopped to the floor in oozing puddles. They caressed my skin with their necrotic hands and pulled me this way and that as I trembled with fear and fought to maintain my sanity.

The lights went out again and I screamed.

That was when the elevator began to drop. I felt weightless for a moment, sheer terror and utter horror as I imagined the ground racing up towards me. My stomach lurched in that familiar sensation like the first large drop of a rollercoaster ride. The phantom hands held me and gripped me roughly, holding me down and waiting for me to die and join them in their never-ending purgatory box.

Some people will tell you if you’re in an elevator when this happens to jump at the last second before you land to lessen the impact. Don’t. This doesn’t work. You’re pretty much fucked unless you can flatten yourself out and even then you should probably just give up and brace for your inevitable death. As I was doing at that moment.

DING

The door opened and the superintendent was standing there, looking down at me. The light from the hallway was bright enough to illuminate the inside of the box and showed there weren’t a dozen pairs of hands attacking me, and I wasn’t free-falling and plummeting to my death as the college kids that now haunted the elevator had.

“Holy shit, am I ever glad to see you,” I said to the super. “I came out here to respond to the emergency call about the people trapped in the elevator. I guess they made it out already. Did you get them out of here?”

He looked a little embarrassed for a second before he spoke.

“Well, the thing is, the emergency call button hasn’t worked for a while. I’ve been meaning to get around to fixing it. You probably got pranked by those damn phantom college kids again. They’ve had it out for you elevator guys ever since the accident. Let me guess – a couple pairs of hands, getting all sexy at first then they start to get real creepy all of a sudden?”

I nodded.

“Man, sorry about that. I’ve been there, no shame, brother.” He thankfully avoided looking down at the tent in my jeans. “Let me help you out of there. When you’re, um, ready, of course. ”

He reached in and held out his hand to pull me out. I hesitated for a second, thinking about Pete’s story. I really liked my legs, I didn’t want to lose either one of them. I thought about Tommy, being cut in half. So many others.

On the other hand, I also didn’t want to get molested and killed by a bunch of zombie hands in the dark.

“You’ve really gotta get that emergency call button fixed,” I said to him. “If you weren’t saving my life right now, I’d have to report you.”

“Yeah, I know. Give me until next week, alright? I’ll fix it myself, don’t worry about it.”

His hand was still outstretched, waiting for me to take it. Was this actually a decent building manager for once? Had he somehow not been bought off by the prince of darkness? Incredible.

“Call Mackenzie Elevator Repair. Tell them a repairman is stuck and needs help asap.”

“I’ll have to leave you here. Are you sure? Those ghost hands are, well, let’s just say they don’t take kindly to rejection.”

“Rule number four,” I told him. “Don’t try to be a hero. Or else you get your arms and legs chopped off. Now go call for help, will you? I’ll be fine.”

And I was, I think. More or less. Probably. I mean my hair turned white the instant that door slid shut again after he left, at the sight of the unspeakable horrors that unveiled themselves to me.

I was rescued not long after (although it felt like a thousand years to me), by Pete, who once again managed to rescue me from certain death. It wouldn’t be the first time, nor would it be the last.

So the moral of the story is – Don’t jump in elevators. It just isn’t worth it. Even if it does make you feel like an astronaut floating in space, for a fraction of a second.

I mean, if you jump around a little, it’s probably not going to hurt anybody. And you only live once. But don’t. And definitely, definitely not all at the same time!