[DISCONTINUED] The Elevator

Chapter 1 - Part 1 of 2

I am aware that I am laying on my side against cold hard metal. As the achiness in my legs gradually becomes unbearable, I remain still, listening. I woke up for the first time around an hour ago, but have been drifting in and out of consciousness like it's the easiest thing in the world, playing a game with myself to see how many times I can get back to sleep.

I've lost track of the answer a while ago now.

Another half an hour goes by and soon I can't get back to sleep no matter my attempts. Strange. I have never been one to stay asleep easy, let alone get to sleep, always having to take something the night before for help, though I just can't remember taking anything, it's all hazy.

It's freezing. It takes all my might not to shiver. Shiver, and then I will have truly woken up. Must be the air-con. But I don't have air-conditioning in my room, only a fan but that's nowhere near as cold as this.

"Hello?" Calls a jittery voice I do not recognise, from not so far away, again. He has been calling out for the past while, and I have been trying to ignore it. Keeping my eyes closed, this is the only thing I hear aside from the buzzing of an overhead light. "Is anyone else awake?"

I take the question into thought. Anyone else? Suddenly I notice the deep breathing all around me. I count the number of people with my eyes still shut. One...there's someone right beside me, two...another to my other side, three...a shallower breath further away, four, five six, seven...someone's snoring, eight, nine, I can't count anymore, there's too many and they mush together in my brain. Where am I? What is going on?

I don't think I'm in my room anymore.

Soon I decide on opening my eyes gradually, while my body remains still. It takes a while to pull my eyelids apart, adjusting to the white blinding light streaming from above. At last I find myself staring straight into a corner of two warm brown walls. My eyes ache when they move and require frequent blinks, but I manage to trail them up a wall to a built-in panel that reads; Press for emergencies. There's a door beside this with another panel that says; Toilet, and shows female and male icons underneath.

Nobody answers to the anxious voice still calling out, though I'm starting to wish someone did. Painful tingling works its way up my legs, and now that I've finally come to, the discomfort is kicking in badly.

I finally can't take it anymore, planting a weak hand on the metal to push myself up to a seated position. Every joint aches, but I push through, then turn around to a large sigh of relief.

"Thank goodness," says the boy from the other side of the room. My gaze lands on him, then instantly falls to the floor, where exactly 18 others lay strewn out around us. From the looks of it, everyone seems my age, and asleep. We are all in a large room. No. My eyes pull from the floor and back to the boy, then to the wall he leans against. Two large and opaque closed sliding doors, and another panel – at arm's length if standing up – right beside them, filled with rows and columns of buttons.

We're in an elevator. Quite a large one.

Instantaneously, I don't feel cold anymore and my heartbeat fastens so that I hear it pounding against my ribcage. Struggling to keep calm, I glance back to the boy, whose wide blue eyes accompanied by dark furrowed eyebrows are already staring my way.

"Why are we in here?" I cautiously whisper, a rasp embedded within my voice, while repositioning carefully to lean against the wall behind.

"I don't know," he shakes his head, "all I know is that I woke up trapped in here and everyone was asleep. I don't even know anyone! I thought they were all dead at first!"

"Don't be too loud," I say softly with my hand out, eyeing the others. I look around, and down to my closest right, lays a girl with her head nestled in her elbows, with dark brown hair strewn out along the floor. Her olive skin contrasts with the white-blue fluorescent lights and her breaths are long and stretched. I can tell she's asleep, or certainly welcoming it.