Whisper The Wind (Larry Stylinson)

Never Have I Ever

Louis stands rigid, practically vibrating out of his skin. Rage. Frustration. His veins are burning. Fists clenched, white-knuckling at his sides.

He stares at the mirrored doors of the elevators. Mirrored doors are stupid. They're offensive and too shiny and too hard to keep clean, fingerprints everywhere. He wills his breathing to calm down, wants his heartbeat back to normal.

He really just needs to get out of here. Get as far away as possible. Far away from his father, and his stupid accounting firm, in this stupid building, with stupid grey walls and grey floors and grey people. Away from his father's preposterous ideas and unreasonable expectations and complete lack of acknowledgement that Louis is his own person with his own life.

He needs some air in his lungs, to clear his head of the noise and nonsense and nutcrackers hammering away inside his skull.

Mirrors. Did the designers really consider people so vapid and self-obsessed that they would want to stand and look at a reflection of themselves while waiting for an elevator? Breathe in, breathe out.

Seems like kind of a waste anyways. Every person in the lift lobby is on their bloody phone. Such is the state of society. He sighs internally. Or maybe not so internally judging by the sideways glare he receives from the woman next to him. Perhaps he should try harder not to channel his grandfather, casting aspersions at the corruption of the world at large and lamenting the loss of basic human interaction and social graces. Yeah. He should probably stop doing that.

In the reflection, he can see behind him out of the floor to ceiling windows. London. Sprawled out below from their perch in this glass monstrosity thirty-two stories in the air. Grey buildings blending into the too grey sky, matching his too grey suit and too grey everything. Bland. Everything is so fucking bland. What happened to colour and vibrancy and joy and laughter and nature and life?

Exactly how long does it take to get an elevator here anyway? Maybe his feet will fuse with the grey marble floor and he'll become a permanent fixture. More grey. All the grey.

It's a bank of eight lifts and pot luck to see which one comes first. Why aren't there screens telling you what floor they're on so you can preempt which one will win the race and arrive first? He doesn't like the randomness. Likes predictability. Certainty. He's a numbers guy after all. Likes when things make sense, likes to get the bottom of a problem. Probably why his father thinks he's going to be perfect as the new Chief Operating Officer. Louis begs to differ.

Tick tock. How long has it been? Long enough for the lobby to fill with a sea of other equally impatient passengers. Everyone racing to nowhere important. God. Let him just get out of here.

Maybe if he pulled his phone out and started scrolling aimlessly through his social feeds or email like all the other grey people the time would pass faster. Maybe there would be comfort in joining the herd. Maybe his unwillingness to dutifully conform to this is why he feels displaced all the time.

An elevator dings four down from where he's standing. A swarm of grey moves towards the doors, crowding and jostling each other for poll position. Clutching their phones like lifelines and making sure not to lift their heads, the risk of making eye contact, and therefore a human connection, far too great. Louis realizes fairly quickly that there's too many people and not enough space and he doesn't think he could stand being crammed into an elevator crushed up against a bunch of strangers like sardines in a imtim for thirty-two floors anyway.

He hears the familiar ding go off again down the opposite end of the lobby and makes a beeline for it while the other passengers are still vying for their square foot of floor space in the sardine tin. A tall thin man exits and the doors start closing almost immediately, obviously an attempt by the universe to reignite his rage. Stopping the mirrored jaws with a firm slap of his hand, he waits for them to open fully again and gruffs under his breath.