I'm Not Paranoid

The elevators in my building are planning murder. The bank of five that sits in the northwest lobby has two troublemakers: the first one on the right, and the second lift on the left. Daily these two conspire to kill innocent, hard working federal employees and contractors. Well, the federal employees are innocent, anyway.

Okay, they're just federal employees. And the elevators want to kill them, along with innocent hardworking contractors like myself.

They differ in style greatly; disparate as Hannibal Lecter and Jason Voorhees. The second, far right elevator welcomes you warmly with open doors, before emitting a shrill, piercing beep as it tries to crush you between it's doors before you've even taken half a step into it. They retract -- as you would expect when you try and hold an elevator door -- only to attack you again, refusing to stay open for even a nanosecond. Jason the elevator will give you a beating before you make it past his doors.

The Lecter elevator is more subtle, and is the most likely to actually succeed. Until you are inside for a ride, nothing seems amiss. Then the creaks start. The sound of scraping, twisting metal. The cuh-cuh-cunk between floors rattling beneath your feet, reminding you of the hollowness below. The bottom could fall out of this elevator, or the entire thing might just go down. It often gets stuck between floors, requiring a technician to pry the doors open to let potential victims out.

It will succeed one day, I know it. I thought it had me this morning, as the cacophony of breaking sheet metal was louder than usual, the stutter and stop more pronounced. When I safely arrived at my floor, a gentleman who I knew resided a couple floors up got off as well. The doors closed, and he pressed the up button. We shared a smile; we shared a thought: that bastard elevator isn't going to get me.