Behind The Voice

by Cassi Gray

CHAPTER NINE

  The elevator was eerily unmoving and silent compared to before. Jeremy left the monitor on, but I couldn’t watch it. I only blankly stared at the carpet just past my still bare feet. My high heels were in a small pile in the furthest corner from me. They had danced around across the floor like a ghost who had too many cocktails when her favorite song came on.

  Deep inside myself, I was surrounded by thoughts and emotions that I never imagined I would have. I was responsible for the death of that man. He died by my hands as surely as he died by Jeremy’s. I could have stopped it, and a small voice told me that I should have stopped it. But I just couldn’t shake off the sticky feeling from the bottom of my stomach that something was wrong, and to let him into the elevator with me would have led to a death of someone other than him.

  I also wasn’t sure how affective Jeremy’s protection could have been had the man actually made it into the elevator with me. The only option he would have had was to drop the elevator and kill us both.

  And then there was the question of why.

  Why was there a man on top of this elevator without any inclination of getting me out?

  Why was he confused about me being in here?

  Why had he lied to me about being here to rescue me?

  There were too many questions, and now I wouldn’t ever know the answers. I just had to believe that it was the right thing to do. If there is ever a right time to kill another person, it’s when your own life is in danger. And while he never admitted to his dark reason for being up there, I knew in my heart that it wasn’t to have a cupcake party.

  Jeremy had fallen silent after the man’s screams were slammed from his body during impact. I could never tell what he was doing or thinking before this, so I was at even more of a loss now.

  I began to wonder if Jeremy even knew what he did. Did he have any remorse? Did he enjoy it?

  I snatched that last question from my thoughts and shoved it into closet that held all my other terrible thoughts that made my stomach lurch in response. But unlike all my other terrible thoughts, that just lay dormant within their dark closet, this one scratched at the door to my conscience. Rattling the knob and tapping incessantly at my core until I let it back out.

  I couldn’t escape it.

  “Jeremy?” I asked the air. Not entirely sure that he was even still with me, although I knew I would be the first to know if he wasn’t.

  Cordelia?

  I couldn’t tell that he had just killed a man by judging the tone of his voice. I wasn’t sure if this was a good sign or not. He was pretty hard to judge just by his voice to begin with.

  “He’s dead, isn’t he.”

  Yes.

  Somehow knowing and hearing are two different things. I knew he was dead. There was no way a person could have survived that. But hearing a confirmation cemented the grim reality of it.

  “Am I ever going to get out of here?” I asked him.

  It was bad enough being trapped in this box alone, but now I would be sharing this space with a spirit of a man that I had a hand in killing. That was not something that I could handle so easily.

  It’s almost time Cordelia, I will be leaving you shortly and you will be safe.

  There weren’t words in my vocabulary to allow me to explain it, but even though I couldn’t see him, I knew that he had separated himself from here and was off doing whatever it was that he did while he was ‘gone’.

  Using a mental index finger, I poked at the air with my mind, trying to find the weakness in a bubble of normality, sure that if I could pop it, I would find Jeremy.

  I didn’t want him to leave. I had spent all day with him, and learned so many things about him, but knew that I had only learned just a fraction of the enigma that was Jeremy.

  Safe. It was a word that I never really held much stock in before. I will be safe soon, he told me. But wasn’t I already safe with him? He sure seemed to prove himself handy in that department. But yet, that just brought up a whole new set of questions.

  I barely noticed that the elevator had started moving again. It was descending, and at its normal steady pace. I’m not sure what triggered it inside me, but my heart leapt for joy and thumped against the back of my throat. I found myself touching my neck half expecting to feel the beating muscle lodged within. Instead I just felt the soft skin of my bare neck.

  I was descending. At a normal pace. My brain finally caught up to my subconscious and heart. I was descending at a normal pace! I was finally going to get out of here! Jeremy once again delivered on his promise. My heart swelled at the thought of him.

  Pushing away from the wall and handrail which I had grown so close to, I felt like I would now need to send it a Christmas card, I smiled so hard my face started to ache. I clutched at my own hands and my entire body was vibrating with excitement.

  I was finally going to be free!

  “Jeremy!” I called out, I just couldn’t help myself.

  “Jeremy!” I called again, a little louder this time. I knew he could hear me. He could always hear me.

  The elevator continued to drift down floor by floor, back on its usual path. My smile faltered, and began to slowly droop as if it was trying to keep pace.

  “Jeremy?” I asked again, this time quieter and with a lot less excitement.

  He couldn’t be gone. He was here. He had to be.

  “Jeremy?” My voice was just a whisper now as I asked the elevator for the voice I had grown just as close to.

  The only response was the soft whir of the lines and cables moving effortlessly through their intricate pulley systems, righting the path of the metal box from its renegade day.

  My eyes darted up to the all-knowing monitor, but at some point the lively screen had gone black again. I blinked at it and waited for it to spring back to life. Nothing happened. I fought back the feeling that many so frequently deemed a bad omen.

  And then his words came back to me gently, like a soft flowing waterfall into a babbling creek, they melded together to form his last sentence, “It’s almost time Cordelia, I will be leaving you shortly and you will be safe.” I could still here his voice softly touch my eardrums and my heart skipped a beat.

  My watery blue eyes were still fixed on the inky blackness of the screen and I pushed against the omen with all my might. I beat against its rock solid chest and screamed incoherent babble at it in a futile attempt to make it not true. But it was.

  He was gone.

  I put my face in my hands and fought back the tears, this was an emotional moment for me. But not for the reasons I thought I would be emotional for.

  I wasn’t trying to suck back tears by taking deep breaths because I was overjoyed to be free of this elevator. I was deeply saddened that Jeremy was gone. I knew that he had kept me safe, and that without him, I likely wouldn’t be alive right now, and if I was, I would be wishing I wasn’t.

  I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment in the day that I had become so attached to Jeremy. It wasn’t a pleasant beginning with him, but at some point, I had learned to love his innocent ways, and now I missed him.

  The elevator came to a stop, and I realized with a growing dread that I was at the lobby. I looked solemnly around me at the walls and carpet that witnessed many things today. While, I would see this elevator many more times in the future, it would never look or feel the same to me after today. When those doors finally opened, that would be the end of my little adventure, and I would be faced with the reality of truly losing Jeremy forever. At least still within the confines of these walls I could call out to him and hope that he would return.

  Sighing heavily to anything that might be listening, I heard the doors begin to pull apart, and I felt my dread swell into an overwhelming wave, lapping at my fragile emotional stability.

  This was it. Once these doors finished opening, he was really gone and his memory would end up fading into the background of my mind where it would end up morphing into something that I would co
nvince myself I had made up.

  Before I allowed that future its moment to take hold, I whispered to him one last time, “Goodbye Jeremy.”

  The growing opening of the doorway revealed a lobby that I was not familiar with, and the tsunami of dread transformed into horror as it crashed down on top of me, shattering any hopes of leaving the elevator alive.

  Gone were the glimmering walls of glass. Only jagged teeth protruding from the frames snarled down in a frozen open mouthed snap at any who dared to pass through. My eyes sunk to the floor along with my heart as I traced pieces of debris, glass, and blood across the once beautifully polished marble floor.

  The round desk made from exquisite rosewood that stood as a dark but welcoming beacon across from the large glass doors remained, but now it looked as though it had been the primary shield for not just one, but many troops in a war. Bullet holes punctured it in random patterns across its exotic face, with gouges among them like they were underlining the obvious statement of violence that had taken place. Scattered about the top of the once spotless desktop, glass from the windows and doors lay in pieces and shards, like wounded soldiers awaiting a doctor.

  Jeremy was gone. And I was anything but safe as I stared at the men who had appeared in the elevator door opening with their guns pointed directly at me.