The Half-Giant's Guide to Seeing the Future

The Day I'm Rescued By My Stalker

A scream escaped my lips as I realized I was about to die hanging in an elevator shaft a dozen stories up. I probably dislocated my arm, and I witnessed my tennis shoe slipping off my right foot and falling down the dark shaft. The guy clutching my hand was the only thing keeping me from meeting the same fate.

He was a stranger, holding onto my hand with one arm and an elevator cable with the other. My heart pounded in my throat, and the ache in my head was getting worse. A thousand questions circled in my brain.

How had the man's fall broken the elevator? Why had this guy come through the emergency hatch in the elevator? What was happening?

"We're going to die," I said.

The guy laughed. "Oh, my best friend would kill me herself if she learned I died in an elevator shaft. Not after the scrapes we've gotten into over the years."

"Just..." I glanced down at the elevator crashed below us, and the sound echoed up back to us as it collided with the ground. "Oh, please don't let go."

"Trust me," he said. "I'm not letting go. Hang on. I just have to reach the string."

In the dim emergency lights, I could make out his dark clothes. They reminded me of military fatigues, except they were made of a strange, not quite leathery material that seemed oddly hard. A dark backpack was slung across his back with several buttons on the straps and one string he was trying to reach with his teeth.

Reaching up, I attempted to yank the string for him. Once my fingers grasped the pull, there was a sharp tug, and two sheets of metal burst from the pack. I realized they were wings the moment they jammed against the sides of the shaft.

Releasing the elevator cable now that he was more secure, he hoisted me against his chest with two hands. It would have been nice being pressed this close to a guy had I, one, known his name, two, had a prior relationship with him, and three, not been trapped in an elevator shaft in close quarters with the guy.

I had a million questions, but I blurted out the first thing that came to mind, "You have wings?"

"Yeah, sorta," he said. "I probably shouldn't have knocked him out, but I didn't have a ton of options. I wasn't about to fire a gun in an elevator, and I only had one hand."

"What is happening?" I asked.

The guy chuckled. "I'm figuring out how to get us out of here because my wings won't help jammed against the sides of the elevator."

He was right. The metal was bent, and we were firmly wedged in the elevator shaft. Which meant we were literally suspended by a backpack. It was only a matter of time before the straps broke under our combined weight.

"We are going to die," I repeated.

"Nonsense," he said. "Now, who knows you were at Mrs. Dorkepski's?"

Apparently, since he knew where I was, he was not only climbing out of emergency hatches but also stalking me. Still, I had more immediate problems, like how to get out of this elevator shaft, so I decided to answer his question.

"My stepsister," I said. "And the rest of my family, but they're all pretty busy."

I didn't know if they'd be worried when I didn't come home right away or if someone in the building noticed the elevator was out of order. Maybe they were calling the cops and emergency services as we spoke. Either that or they were making sure they were all ready for school.

The guy glanced at a device on his wrist. It was large, like a cross between the things football players used to look at plays and a really wide smartwatch.