While standing in the elevator,
I'm hit with many nervous thoughts.
I picture the fearful faces of everyone around me,
their anxious eyes and primal panic
when they hear the cable strain and snap.
I imagine the horrible screeching sound
as we plummet, trapped, for 40 floors.
Imagination begets imagination.
Then I'm filled with visions of this little box
somehow slowly but surely flooding with water.
I can feel that last desperate breath, treading water,
at the top of our iron prison,
before we drown together in the darkness.
Fear begets fear.
I visualize the doors opening to a wasteland,
another place entirely.
A shadowed space that crawls with
whining wraiths, and echoes with the
beckoning moans of the dead and the damned.
My ride on the elevator ends
And the most horrible thing of all happens:
The elevator deposits me on the fifth floor
to work another dreary day,
free from the fears of falling, drowning, and destruction
Free from all
of those wonderful things…
