by Cassi Gray
CHAPTER FOUR
There was no trace of a threat in his statement, but that didn't change the fact that I instantly became chilled to the bone as if someone had dipped me into a tank of dry ice infested water and left me in a wind tunnel for a solid nine minutes.
My mind was reeling with crazy thoughts and scenarios of stalkers taking control of the elevator, of me truly losing my mind, or perhaps this was all just a dream?
A dream. Yes. That had to be it.
I pinched myself and sucked in a breath of air through my teeth at the pain. But the elevator didn't melt away and I didn't wake up interwoven in my soft sheets, happily drowning in blankets on my comfortable and warm bed.
Instead, the voice spoke to me again.
Are you in pain?
"No," I answered, questioning my sanity again.
Why did you make that sound then?
"I pinched myself." I replied.
There was a brief moment of blissful quiet. And then the voice continued to question me.
Did it hurt?
"Yes."
The voice was silent for a moment more. I looked about the elevator as if I was going to see something.
I thought you said you were not in pain?
This was just going in circles, I felt like I was trying to hold a conversation with a two year old. And I desperately needed to keep from banging my head against the wall. Although if I did that, I might pass out and then would be spared whatever might be coming.
I filed that thought under the Ponder More section in my brain. I would come back to it later.
I decided I was going to poke at the sub-zero statement that the voice said to me moments ago. I needed to know what he meant. Surely he couldn't keep me locked up in here forever. Right?
I mean there had to be people who were wondering why this elevator wasn't working, some kind of alarm going off somewhere? In this day and age elevators didn't just stop without a team of people knowing about it and attempting to fix the problem.
"Why aren't you helping me?" I asked again, only this time I was hoping for a different response.
The voice didn't answer right away.
I am helping you.
This wasn't any different of an answer then what I got before.
Becoming increasingly frustrated, I chewed at the inside of my cheek. It would seem that I need to word my questions very carefully.
"So you say. But how are you helping me? Why do you want to keep me in here?"
A slightly higher pitch ended my questioning, my aggravation wearing through my cool exterior and showing itself by bleeding into my voice.
The man's voice remained quiet. I almost had this feeling like it was thinking, or contemplating what I had said.
Sighing, I stuffed my growing anger back into its cage within me and tried to form the thoughts and questions in my mind. I decided to go through a mental checklist of things the voice had said to me. It seemed calm, yet confused about simple things.
I almost felt like I was speaking to a child, and a very young one at that. But the voice didn't match that of any toddler I've ever come across. So that really only left one option.
This had to be a prank. I started to smile when I realized that it must be a hidden camera show.
"Okay," I said to the elevator, "The joke's up, I know this is a prank."
I waited for the sound of the doors opening up, or for the voice to come back on laughing, even for the apparently dead emergency phone to ring.
So I waited some more. Each passing second that nothing happened, my hopes fell ever so slightly.
What is a prank?
The question made me laugh. I couldn't help myself. The producers of the show must need to fill some time and needed a lot of material to sift through and edit, so they were going to continue the game.
Why are you laughing?
At this point there was no stopping my laughter. It bubbled up within me, and spilled out between my lips despite my clenching them together, which resulted in a sputtering type noise as if I was impersonating a motor boat. Which in turn, churned up more giggles, I couldn't keep the laughter contained now even if my life depended on it.
While I tee-heed hysterically I had this fleeting thought of delirium. I was convinced I had read somewhere that a sign of going delirious was guffawing uncontrollably.
Why are you laughing?
The man's voice continued to question me. And I responded by continuing to spit out cackling sounds.
My fit of snorting and hee-haws abruptly stopped when the elevator unexpectedly dropped at least a foot, causing me to hang briefly and then slam back onto the floor with such force that it knocked the breath, and any lingering chuckles out of me.
I lay gasping on the floor, staring out at the short and worn fibers of the carpet that I had unwillingly grown so close to.
The forceful wave of laughter had come and gone, and now nothing tickled my slightly demented funny bone. Everything was all serious again. My mind felt the need to escape and I wondered how many shoes had walked and stood on this very fabric. Where those shoes were going, and where they had come from.
Many people stated the age old adage of ‘what if walls could talk', well what if shoes could talk? Shoes could go everywhere there were walls, and then some.
I'd rather listen to shoes talk than walls, but depending on the shoe and who wore it, it would need to scrape some of the gum from its sole and chew on it to freshen its breath.
Cordelia.
Still lying on the floor, I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the voice. Pushing it out of my head, and slamming the door shut behind it, but I felt it would knock again soon.
Cordelia.
I knew full well now who dropped the elevator, and I wanted no part of conversing with whoever that person was.
Cordelia.
I also knew from experience that he wasn't going to give up.
Cordelia.
"Why are you doing this to me?" Was all I could muster up for my side of the conversation.
I do not understand. I am helping you.
Despite being tossed around in this can, I smiled.
"You have an odd way of helping," before he could respond, I added, "What's your name?"
I wasn't expecting an answer. I simply asked it to try to get the talk to go into a different direction other than how I was going to die in this elevator, because this twisted man was confusing the definition of help with torture.
Jeremy.
I said the name silently and let my tongue toss it around in my mouth and slip out between my lips.
"Jeremy." I said out loud this time.
Yes?
I smiled again, mostly because of the innocence the voice dripped with. Perhaps this man wasn't confused after all. Perhaps he was something entirely different.
"No, I…never mind."
I lifted myself up from being sprawled out on the floor to a seated position once again. My chin was aching ever so slightly and I rubbed it, trying to test if there was a bruise or not.
Are you in pain?
"Well it doesn't feel entirely good when you drop the elevator like that." I grumbled.
Whether he couldn't hear me, or he didn't care to respond, the elevator lay in a hush. I was beginning to enjoy the quiet moments.
I stared back up at the monitor, not really sure what I should do, or could do, next.