By Riley Quinn
The space is cramped with all thirteen of us in here, but we couldn’t tell the woman in labor and her neurotic husband to wait for the next elevator with her looking ready to pop, and nor could we disclude the man with his son and daughter here to see their mommy who they talked excitedly about seeing while their father stood behind them with tears silently rolling down his face, but the annoying man yelling into his cellphone about how his mother had yet another heart attack and how could she keep him from meetings with these important high-rolling clients, so him we could’ve told to catch the next ride up though he had rudely shoved his way in pushing the nurses, just coming in for their shift, towards the back of the elevator and it wasn’t that the nurses were nice or anything, shoving is just rude, but I mean, there were three nurses and at the time when they got on the elevator we had plenty of room for them but it didn’t mean any of us particularly enjoyed their presence because one kept telling the other female nurse about all the crazy partying she did last night with a bunch of girlfriends since her boyfriend, who was nurse number three, was busy last night doing things with his family but judging by the look he and the other female nurse exchanged when she wasn’t looking, so we all figured the only thing he was doing last night was her, female nurse number two, but of course the three of them were oblivious to the doctor in scrubs with a surgical mask hanging from his face just under his chin with this almost broken look on his face because he had just broken the news to a family that he had lost their child on the operating table but at the back, the very back, was the passenger everyone was avoiding and it wasn’t because of the two orderlies standing on either side of him because they actually had friendly faces and were some of the nicest guys working in that particular part of the hospital, so, shocker, the other passengers were afraid of the psych ward patient in the wheelchair in a straightjacket muttering to himself about how they’re going to die, they’re all going to die, crash, bang, boom, splat, followed by a crazy laugh and then he’d start it all over again, and now I know what you’re wondering, that’s all thirteen passengers, so which one is he because he has to be one of them, and the answer is yes I am, but you have probably guessed already which one I am, and you are also probably wondering why I am muttering such things and telling you about all these people in the elevator and that would be because they are all going to die, myself included, and someone should know the truth of what happened here today because when people talk about the passengers on the elevator and say they were great people, but you’ll know the truth, that some of them were rotten and deserved the end that befell them, fell, I’m so funny, you see, the elevator is rigged so that once the door closed after the last person got on from the first floor, the elevator will make a direct trip to the top of the building and then one more express trip, straight to the morgue in the basement and so you see the hilarity of my word choice, and I laugh manically again and you can see them all flinch, they can’t wait to escape me, but probably noticed that we have reached the top, the thirteenth floor, that is until the elevator comes to a screeching halt and suddenly drops and over the deafening sounds of their terrified screams, my manic laughter can be heard.