1. The Unluckiest Man Alive #2
Shit. Is that what I said?
The more I flounder like a complete idiot, the higher the chance I smother any good impression Irelyn used to have of me.
She’s going to think I’m a weirdo. A virgin weirdo!
I’m not, contrary to popular belief. Victoria Spalling had her way with me on the night of our senior prom.
Granted, it was rushed and unromantic and I lasted about forty seconds, but it happened.
“No! That’s not what I meant. I…I love sex. So much. Mm-hm. I have it all the time. In the shower, on the stairs, on the kitchen counter. It’s sex city up in my house. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have sex. I—”
Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise that something cuts me off before I can dig myself a deeper grave, but that something just so happens to be a concerning cacophony of screeching brakes and high-pitched thuds.
Suddenly, the digital numbers on the display panel wink out of existence.
The elevator drops a few inches—enough to alert me to the newest pitfall of this failed endeavor—and Irelyn immediately grabs my arm.
Whether it’s instinctual or not, I have no idea, but her touch is the only thing keeping me from losing my shit.
The carriage rumbles a bit before free-falling a good ten feet, eventually jerking to a stop that creates a hair-raising stagnancy. A shroud of collective fear falls over the condensed area, the sound of aborted exhales severing the disturbingly still silence.
Irelyn’s fingers are gripping the life out of my arm.
The tension is so thick that it abrades my throat when I swallow, and all my rational, problem-solving genes have fled the premises at the prospect of being stuck in a very small space with the only person in the world who could make my pulse tachycardic.
“Did the elevator just break?” I ask, clinging to Crew’s box of sex toys like it’ll somehow prevent me from falling to my death in case the floor gives out.
Irelyn slowly inches toward the car operating panel, clicking a few buttons experimentally. No movement. No ding. No light. Nothing. Just the unnerving clack of stainless steel.
Fuck. FUCK. This is bad. I’m trapped in an elevator with a box of sex toys and the girl who’s been plaguing my mind ever since I met her my junior year of college. If my hockey teammates could see me now, they’d be laughing their asses off.
“Shit. I think it’s stuck,” she relays, finally dropping her hand and pawing at the doors to see if they’ll budge.
I don’t know what’s more upsetting—possibly being stuck in here for the foreseeable future with no food, no water, and a dwindling oxygen supply, or depriving myself of her touch.
I hate claustrophobic spaces. I hate the lack of control. People who cave dive are psychopaths. Humans were made to frolic in large fields, not be confined to life-sized sardine cans like elevators and airplanes and submarines.
Unbridled dread blusters through me, extinguishing the sad, guttering flame of confidence that I had stored for this very moment. In a matter of seconds, I lose the weak grip on my composure and dive headfirst into a downward spiral. A path well-trodden, if I do say so myself.
I’m too afraid to move. If I displace any surface pressure, it might make the elevator drop further. My fingernails carve grooves into the cardboard as vertigo holes up in my pounding head. The edges of my vision grow spotty, flickering like old film before bursting into Rorschach inkblots.
“Oh my God, we’re going to die,” I whisper.
Irelyn—the only person who I’ve ever seen command the attention of an entire room and make some lowly freshman piss himself out of fear after he accidentally spilled his drink on a girl and refused to apologize—grabs the reins before I accidentally seal our death sentence.
She springs into action, lifting her phone up and trying for a signal, but the litany of swears that curtails her plan tells me we’re out of service. Then, she screams at the top of her lungs for help.
Not a peep. Either we’re stuck between floors and our voices are muffled through dense infrastructure, or there aren’t enough patrons in the building to hear us.
So, she resorts to the final option—slapping her hand against the Emergency Call button and praying that the local fire department is in the neighborhood.
I drag my back down the wall until my butt hits the floor, abandoning my emotional support box and exiling it to the corner so I have some space to breathe.
Or try to breathe. I’ve heard horror stories about people getting stuck in elevators, but I never thought it would happen to me.
I can faintly make out the inflection of Irelyn’s voice as she’s talking to building security, but the words get lost in translation.
This is it. There’s no telling how long the fire department will take to arrive. And if things weren’t already terrible, I’ve been absolutely zero help. I’m the one who should’ve handled the situation and fixed it as quickly as humanly possible.