Elevator, Floor 4, The Cranmore Building: Two Stars. It Knows What It Did.
I did not request this elevator. I did not consent to this elevator. I pressed a button and it arrived, doors yawning open like it had been waiting — like it had prepared. That is not innocence. That is premeditation.
The interior: beige. Not a warm beige. Not an apologetic beige. A deliberate beige, the beige of something that has made its choices and intends to make them again. The floor bore a faint scuff mark in the left corner that I can only describe as pointed. I am not a man who imagines things. I have a nose that has detected truffle through three floors of a parking garage. I know a scuff with intent.
The doors closed before I had fully settled my stance. I want that noted. I want that in the record. There is a sensor — ostensibly — and yet. The ride lasted eleven seconds. I have had longer encounters with revolving doors and those, at least, have the dignity to keep moving. This elevator stopped. It lingered at Floor 4. For no one. Nobody got on. It simply paused, as if collecting itself, as if reflecting on what it had done to me.
I am giving two stars because the button panel was legible and I believe in fairness, unlike the citrus cabal over at that rival rag, where Tangelo recently called a ferry terminal "charming." Charming. My colleagues Quince and Sloe were present for the Cranmore incident and both have agreed, in writing, to corroborate my account. The elevator has not responded to requests for comment. Typical.