Best Day of My Life

The elevator was out of commission today.

Some workers had come to repair it, but I needed to get out of the building for a semi-urgent errand. The one man offered me to ride down ON TOP OF the service elevator. I was a little hesitant at first, because it was dark and unfamiliar in there, but he had a work light and he said it was safe, that he did it every day. I thought to myself "when will such an opportunity ever present itself to me again?"

So I climbed on, stepping carefully between cables, pulleys, tools, and other elevator appendages. I glanced up, into the vertical chamber which tapered off to the eleventh floor as we slowly descended, shadows stretching and bending in the falling light as we glided down through this quiet catacomb.

Two humans on the back of the quietly rumbling beast.

When we reached the bottom he pried the doors open and the transition was instantaneous: sunlight, street and people outside, taxicabs, fortune tellers and nail salons. I just stepped out of there as though it were the most natural thing to pass between worlds like that. What a strange, strange life it must be for an elevator repairman...