who were you with?
A couple of friends from school. We were in a shopping centre on lunch break.
what floor where you on?
There were only two floors. We were going down.
why did it stop?
The elevator was a real rickety piece of crap that creaked like mad when it moved. One of my friends thought that this was hilarious, and started jumping up and down. The elevator stopped moving for a few seconds, and then resumed. Naturally this made the piece of crap elevator EVEN MORE entertaining than before. So a few days later he starts jumping up and down again. Once again it stops moving. Only this time it doesn't start again. Fuck.
how long were you in there?
About 15 mins, maybe.
were you scared?
No. Just thought I was going to be late back to class, and get in shit.
So there we were stuck in a non moving elevator, somewhere between the first and second floors. What to do in such a situation? We waited a minute or two to see if the thing would start up again on its own. It didn't. There was of course always the 'Bell' button in the elevator for just such an emergency. I had always wondered what exactly this button did. Well, I guess that the time had come to find out. We would press it, and a crack team of elevator engineers would have us out of there in no time at all. I reached over and pushed the button, and.....'BEEP'.
That's right, the button beeps. Nothing more, nothing less. Beeps. Not a particularly loud beep. Not a foghorn that can be heard from a mile away alerting those elevator engineers to our presence. No just a beep. Pressed it again. 'BEEP'. Still not believing it, I held it down this time. 'BEEEEEEEEEEEP'. Fuck.
So we sat around for a bit. Literally sat down. Chatted for a while. Argued for a while.
Then I decided that *I* was going to get us out of here. I walked up to the pair of metal doors, and spread them apart. Easy, they moved apart without much effort at all. On the other side of the pair of metal doors.....another pair of metal doors! Ok, well, take two....only these one's wouldn't budge. At all. Not a hope.
Tried the button again. 'BEEP'. Still no good. Fuck.
Tried the outter doors again. Not budging. Fuck.
Started eyeing up the 'Bell' button for another shot but decided against it. Went back to sitting around in the elevator. Then realised that these people weren't my friends. They were a bunch of assholes and I couldn't stand to be near them for another moment. I was going to tear someones juggular out any second. Cabin fever was already setting in and it had only been, maybe 10 minutes! I had to get out of there!
I started examining the area around the outter doors. Found a weird looking mechanical dealie. A friend started warning me against messing around with stuff I didn't know what was. What did he think was going to happen? That this latch-like thing here was going to unhook the elevator from the cable, and that we were going to plummet to our deaths? Well given the alternative was sitting around with these bastards.....
So I started pulling at stuff. And twisting stuff. And generally fucking around. Finally something gave, and we weren't plunging to our deaths. The outter doors had been unlocked, and they slid right open. Thankfully when I opened it, I wasn't faced with the empty area between the two floors. There was a three feet gap opening out onto the lower floor, where we could slide through and jump down.
We jumped out and headed for the hot food counter in the supermarket. Had a good lunch and made it back to class on time.
I wonder what the staff thought when they found the elevator, just sitting there, half way up the wall, with its doors open?
