Chapter 18
I’d spent weeks scouting the building—the wing I’d chosen was twenty-eight stories tall, with barely secured rooftop access, and elevators from the late nineties that creaked like the bones of someone who’d lived too long and still refused to die.
It was perfect. Serendipitous in a way. They also still ran on an outdated traction system with counterweights and a manual brake override.
Meaning, if you wanted to try to die, it was a really good elevator to do it in.
As always, I planned the stunt for a time when no one could stop me.
It was a quiet night, past midnight, during a snowstorm, when most of the city was asleep or too high to care what I was doing.
The plan was simple enough. I wanted to ride the elevator on the outside of it; not beside it but rather on top of it.
If my math was correct, the descent would stop just above the basement level.
At the bottom was a pit, six feet deep, lined with concrete and buffers.
When the elevator reached it, there would be less than two feet between the roof I’d be lying on and the ceiling of the pit.
If my math was incorrect, and the safety failed, or the emergency brake didn’t catch, that gap would vanish, and I’d be squashed like a bug.
I wouldn’t be around to hear the “told you so,” plus I didn’t give a fuck.
Once in the elevator, I pried the doors open on the fourteenth floor using a screwdriver and a crowbar that I had stowed in my bag.
I jammed the emergency brake to stop it mid-floor, then hauled myself through the access panel on the ceiling.
Getting on top wasn’t the hard part. Staying alive once I was up there? That was the experiment.
The shaft was so dark it made me feel deaf and blind. My GoPro caught only my face at first—lit by the weak flicker of the service bulb a few floors above—and the outline of the cables that thrummed with stored energy, vibrating with the weight of the whole damn system.
“Let’s see what the universe wants to do with me today,” I muttered, my voice swallowed by the echo.
I lay flat on the roof of the elevator, heart pounding against the metal like it was trying to shake me off and leave me behind.
A thin layer of grime coated everything, and I knew one wrong move would send me sliding off the edge and into oblivion.
But I wasn’t afraid. I was wired, almost euphoric.
Like this was finally the moment I’d been working toward.
The trick was starting the descent. From what I’d learned online, the brake release lever could be triggered manually from the top if you knew what to pull.
I found the steel handle near the rear of the roof, half rusted and forced it down.
I didn’t count down. I didn’t pray. I didn’t say anything at all as the elevator lurched beneath me, and for a split second nothing happened.
I just heard a creak. A whirring sound of the ancient cables above me.
Then a small movement made the metal I was holding onto sway slightly, and my stomach dipped, not enough to make me call it quits, but enough to make me second-guess my whole plan for just half a moment.
The cables groaned louder, and suddenly they dropped.
I found myself surfing steel as it fought gravity.
The metal roof rattled under my stomach, shaking my arms, sending vibrations up my spine forcing me to hold on.
It wasn’t too fast at first. Just a quick tug pulling me downward.
Then came the acceleration. The cables whined, the shaft blurred, and my body yanked into freefall while lying down.
My ears popped. My blood surged till my face felt like it was on fire and my teeth clattered together.
The air punched out of me as the elevator gained speed.
My hands gripped the lip of the vibrating roof so hard my knuckles tore open.
My body shook with it. Dust flew in my eyes.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Just dropdropdropdrop…
I couldn’t curse or laugh or call out; my mouth was just opened as if in a soundless scream. My hands were wet with sweat; my busted knuckles protested as I held onto the edge, not letting go.
I didn’t know how many floors I had flown past, but I thought I might be close to the end when at one point, gravity began pulling harder than my grip.
If the system misread the weight differential, the safety would fail, and I’d be flattened like a pancake.
I was almost there… The speed was so intense that the noise around me almost bled into silence.
My body was pinned to the metal, and I braced myself for impact.
Then, out of nowhere, the governor cable engaged with a grinding groan that almost sounded like thunder.
Sparks burst down the wall of the shaft as the elevator’s safety jaws bit into the rails.
The shrieking of metal against metal reverberated in my ears as the car jerked to a stop so hard that it nearly threw me off.
My chest slammed against the edge, my ribs screamed.
And then—silence. It had stopped inches above the kill zone.
I didn’t move for a full minute. Not out of caution or shock but because of the adrenaline coursing through my body.
I blinked as I stared up at the cable above me, now gone slack.
I should’ve been dead. I’d wanted to be.
That was the whole point. But somehow, again, life held on.
I felt like clapping, as though applauding myself for surviving made sense.
I turned my head slightly, my cheek scraped against the gritty metal, and I felt it leave a smear of something on my cheek. I blinked again. I was still here. I almost couldn’t believe it.
An emergency response must have kicked in because the elevator clicked back to life and slowly began to rise.
I crawled back through the hatch, arms shaking so bad it took me two tries to drop back inside.
I collapsed on the floor and laughed. I laughed so hard I nearly puked.
I wasn’t sure anymore if I was relieved or pissed. But I was still here. That much I knew.
Later on, Carter emailed me the final cut.
The video was tight, edited perfectly, with just enough audio distortion and motion blur to stay within YouTube’s community guidelines.
In one frame, my face was caught mid-fall—eyes wide, pupils blown, mouth open—and the caption read: When your life flashes before your eyes but skips all the best parts.
I uploaded the footage four days later.
The title was simple: #7 Elevator Drop (Don’t Do This at Home)
Within an hour, it was trending. Within two hours, Carter called me.
“Dude,” he said, barely able to catch his breath between bursts of laughter. “What in the actual hell? That was like Mission Impossible meets every panic attack I’ve ever had.”
“I almost died,” I replied flatly.
“I know! I was freaking out! And your face when it stopped… I replayed that like twelve times. Did you see the meme of it rounding the internet?”
There was silence on my end. I didn’t see any memes. I didn’t even have social media other than my one YouTube account, and an old Facebook that brands used to reach out to me.
Carter went quiet, then said, “Hey… you’re okay, right?”
“Define okay.”
“I mean… not dead?”
“Yeah. I’m not dead.”
He exhaled, clearly not yet processing what a stupid question that had been.
“Christ, Danny.”
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I tried. But every time I closed my eyes, all I could hear was the elevator shaft screaming, except this time my plan had worked.
I was trapped between floors, my ribs were caving inward, my organs were slowly being crushed inside of me.
I took one last gasping breath before my heart punched into my lungs and I died.
My eyes flew open, grateful for once, to see the crack in the ceiling above me instead of the never-ending dark hole of the elevator shaft.
I sat on the edge of the couch, hands gripping the frame, my hands still raw and stiff.
I opened my laptop and winced as the glow from the screen hurt my eyes.
I dimmed the light and looked back at the empty document that I had opened.
I titled it, ‘why’, and made a list of all the reasons I was still doing this.
I felt I needed a reminder. I didn’t want my resolve to slip.
I was growing tired. My busted knuckles protested the movement, bruised and crusty with a freshly formed scab.
Age 3: Left at a gas station.
Age 6: First broken bone no one treated.
Age 10–17: Everything.
Age 21: Homeless for six months.
Age 31: My editor thinks Friends is therapy and I’m still here.
I stared at the blinking cursor. My fingers hovered. The air in the room felt heavier as the weight of all I had been through filled the space around me.
Then I typed: I should be dead.
And underneath that: I don’t know why I’m not.
“Does this guy think he’s Tom Cruise?”
“I just don’t understand why??”
“He looks like he gets off on the pain.”
“God why is he so hot when he does the stupidest things. He’s such a red flag and I want him anyway.”
“Did you hear his voice at the start of the video? Oh, my gawd I just know he must be amazing in bed.”
“I swear this guy is gonna kill me emotionally before he gets himself killed.”