by Thomas, Anne
The elevator went upwards, slowly, creaking, giving off eery sounds that she had always hated. Her mind flashed to the Disney World ride of Tower of Terror and imagined the elevator flying down the chute to her death. She looked at the buttons the floors only went up to six. Not nearly as dramatic as the movies. Why would the haunted elevator even bother?
Because of this, she convinced herself that she was safe. Yet it was a fleeting thought, so soon the elevator raced past the third floor and went up to the top, then screeched to a stop forceful enough that she crammed her body in the corner and hung on tight. The doors flew open and stuck that way.
Her breath came only in small gasps. The floor up here was freezing cold, despite the fact that it was only a not too cold October. But it was cold enough to make her skin prick with goosebumps through her purple light windbreaker.
The floor was also pitch black she had heard of this place. It was no longer rented out but closed off instead. The builders weren't the smartest the elevator was the only way out. There was a fire and the only escape had been this elevator. Luckily, no one had been killed, but there were serious burns the two men that were home at the time had managed to jam the elevator doors closed to protect from the fire and had waited there until the fire department had come. After that, instead of investing in getting the apartment redone and build a fire escape, they had made sure the floor was sturdy enough to safely stand so that the floors below would be safe, and then they had shut this level down.
Which meant that some of the walls were still marked with the black tattoos that the fire had left behind. It looked eerie here, especially against all the cobwebs and such against it. No one had lived here for over ten years. And thanks to the lazy attendant, there was no way out for Molly. Not with the freaky elevator stuck.
This had happened once before to her when she had first gotten the place. She was frightened of small, dark places, but there had been rats and bats up here at the time, so she had been forced to stay in the elevator and close the doors after about an hour or so, she was in hysterics.
Harrison, who was supposed to be showing her around town that day, had found her that way, on the edge of unconsciousness and scared out of her wits. He had known she must have been stuck up there and had to call the fire company to get her down which had taken longer than forever for someone like Molly.
But this time, no one would find her like that. She'd stay calm and she'd get out.
She got out her cell phone, already knowing she couldn't call and that there would be no bars for a signal, but looking anyway. Once this fact was confirmed, she pressed the back button on it, which made
light shine from the flashlight indicator at the top. There, that was something, at least.
She looked around, but the light actually made it scarier than the dark had. Which was a good thing, considering that her battery was low.
After trying to pry off the wood from the windows and failing, she looked around the floor one more time. Not finding any other ways of escape, she returned to the elevator and started trying to pry the carpet from the floor. By the time she had ripped up about two feet, her fingertips were sore and bleeding slightly. But she had found what she working for a square of the elevator floor had been cut out by the firefighters. When it was replaced, they had put a latch on it so if the elevator got stuck again, the firefighters would be able to get to the people inside easier and faster. Harrison had escaped this way, using heavy duty working gloves to shimmy down the sharp elevator lines. Even with those gloves, the line had torn through to his skin. She didn't have anything to protect her hands, so escaping down the lines was useless, even though all power to the elevator had shut off by itself to make it safe in at least that way. The power wouldn't be returning for at least a week when the companies came.
"Well this sucks." She growled, leaving the latch door open and standing up, walking around it. Because of the cold, she tried to shut the doors but found it impossible. They were jammed open.
Zipping her windbreaker a little higher and tucking her chin and mouth inside to make it warmer, she checked her watch. In ten minutes she was supposed to be meeting Marty, Joe and Harrison at a restaurant for a late lunch or early dinner. It wasn't good now they'd all be gone by now. Unless...
Harrison was known to be late to most everything but work. Would he still come? But even if he did, how would he know that she was here? Over half the time he took the stairs too. Five or six times to be stuck up here over the years was enough to gamble with the elevator only when he had time to spare.
She hadn't seen his truck outside the apartment, and he had to come home to feed his dog Jake and take him out for a run over a block or too.
Either way, he'd find her. He always did when she managed to get herself in difficult positions, despite the fact that she hated it had to be him. After one of these 'wonderful rescues of the damsel in distress' he'd gloat and act like her own personal super hero that she just had to have because she was quite helpless quite often.
After a half hour of being stranded up there, she was starting to think that she'd willing let him gloat around if he wanted to if only he'd come...
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Molly looked at her watch. Forty five minutes late to the restaurant and she still wasn't sure of Harrison's whereabouts, only that he wasn't here. She had already debated taking her clothes and making a rope of it to try to get to another level but not only was the material of her clothes too slippery to have knots that would keep, but she only wore a pair of jeans and a tank top with a windbreaker over top not much to go on.
While waiting, she even had a debate with herself over the pros and cons of having hair like Repunzel. It must suck to comb out all the time, but it sure would come in handy at strange times like this. After all, if she was Repunzel, she wouldn't be sitting in the corner of a broken elevator, shaking from the cold and listening to the high squeak noises of either mouse or bat, perhaps both. She sat as still as possible after a while, paranoia setting in as her mind played tricks on her making her think that the elevator was slowly sinking and would soon crash to the ground.
But she was calm, and that was the important thing. She refused to let her situation get the best of her and leave her with the worst this time. This time would be different. She'd survive this in one piece if only someone would come and lend her a hand...
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Harrison came strolling in the apartment building, the blue fur of an Australian dog leading the way.
Jake hated the stairs. He'd go up them if his fur was soaked and wanted to me home as quickly as possible which required breaking away from his master and running up the stairs. But on a sunny day such as this, he wanted to go the lazy way, despite the fact that Harrison was so late to dinner. He was sure Molly would give him quite the mouthful when he arrived at the restaurant an hour late.
"Jake, that elevator takes five minutes just to go down, let alone go up. You hate when it creaks, remember? And what if it happens to get stuck? I'll be able to get out, but the hell with you. And then Molly would freak out more on me because I'd have to save your sorry behind, which should only take an hour..."
Harrison looked down at the dog that was staring back at him with mismatched eyes that looked at him as if saying, 'aren't you wasting more time arguing with your dog instead of just doing what little that I ask?'
Which ended up sealing the deal. "Fine, fine." He groaned, pressing the down button at the elevator doors. It didn't work. He stood there for a few minutes, yet still nothing happened.
"Must be broken." He said.
His cell phone rang.
"Redford." He answered.
"Hey, where are you and Molls at?" It was Marty, sounding aggravated.
He checked his watch, seeing he was now over an hour late. A little late for him but passable, but not for Molly. Molly would have been
there on time. She was always on time.
His gaze passed over the closed doors of the broken elevator.
"Oh damn..." He whispered, shutting his phone quickly.
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Molly clung to the rails on the elevator after it had started to groan loudly. She scolded herself for letting a whimper or two to escape her chest. She was strong and she wasn't afraid.
A scream escaped her throat when the elevator shook back and forth.
"Molly? Molls, you up there?" His voice was faint, but recognizable.
"Harrison! Oh thank God! Get me down from here now!"
Harrison sighed, putting on his gloves and tying his dog's leash to a doorknob nearby. "You have the weirdest ways of getting yourself in trouble, Radcliffe." He said.
"Oh, like I tried to get myself stuck up here with open doors and rats and bats and dark and freezing cold..." She spite fired back.
"Good Molls. Keep getting pissed at me." Harrison whispered, trying to get her mind off of her situation. "Well what the hell got you to take the elevator? You haven't taken it in over two years after the last time you got yourself stuck in here!"
"It was because I didn't feel so good after your sickening sweet Candy Grey decided to come and talk to me again about things God knows I don't want to hear. Do you think you could stand to explain to that woman that your romantic affairs do not concern me and I rather not hear of them at all? I mean really this is the second time she came to talk to me about you and I don't want to hear it! I don't want to know!"
Harrison snickered, grabbing the line and preparing to climb it.
"So, she's telling you how terribly romantic I can be when I want to?" He looked around him, groping the line with all his limbs to keep on. "You know, with all this training I've done right here, I might have made a damn good firefighter." He commented, more like thinking out loud.
"You could have been a damn good many things if you had tried." Molly said, drifting off the subject.
"Yes, but had I done that, I wouldn't of been able to get you a good job and you wouldn't be here."
She looked around her damn and dark surrounds and sighed. "Gee...thanks?" The voices of doubt that had been talking to her for days now came back.
"Well, I didn't exactly mean right here..." Harrison said with a light chuckle.
"I really don't see what's so funny about this."
"Eh, I don't really find it funny either. But it's quite entertaining, isn't it?"
"What? You're not enough of a hero for Candy Grey so you have to come acting all firefighting heroish to me?"
"Hey, you wanted my help you need my help. So I wouldn't be dissing the hero factor in me."
She groaned, crossing her arms and subjecting herself to his mercy. "Just please...please try to hurry. I've never been more miserable in my life."
"At least you're doing okay. Much better than last time, anyway. Now you're just complaining. Quite an improvement for you. For me? Eh, it's still a little hard on the ears."
Molly rolled her eyes, playing with her dying flashlight on her cell phone. Two blinks of light. Three quicker ones. Illuminating the walls and making the squeaks louder by yet with more distance away from the elevator.
Finally, one tan gloved hand slammed against the floor of the elevator, visible from the hole the open hatch left. She gasped in delight, grabbing hold of his wrist and helping to haul him in. Once his full body was contained in the elevator, he laid against a corner wall, his eyes closing for a moment. "God that's a hard climb." He panted.
Molly smiled, crawling over to him and wrapping her arms around his chest, laying against him. "For all the moaning and frustration I give you...I really am so grateful that you're here. Thank you so much for coming up here." She whispered in to his shoulder.
He kissed the top of her head. "Anytime, babe. Anytime. But last time I checked, Marty was getting pretty mad that the two of us were so late. So let's get us back down to ground level."
Groaning as he got up, he pushed his body back down the floor hole and disappeared for a few minutes, banging perusing.
Once it fell silent, Harrison's upper body reappeared. "Alright Radcliffe you're going to slide your legs down and wrap your arms tightly around my neck just like last time but hold on stronger. Can you do it?"
"Of course I can." She replied, blocking out the memory of last time when her shaky hands had accidently let go of Harrison and she nearly fell to her almost certain death.
Harrison sat on the floor with his legs dangling down the hole and she did the same, opposite of him, then carefully leaned over and wrapped her arms around his neck as tightly as she could with him still breathing.
He skimmed down the wire with his feet for a moment or two, then pulled a free fall until Molly's body followed suit and was dangling in the air, Harrison's hands gripping the thick wire.
He did his best not to show his strain and not to groan in his distress, but Molly saw it anyway it was hard enough to handle his own body weight, let alone hers of a hundred and twenty.
"Almost there." He whispered in to her curly mass of hair, his voice straining, like the rest of him.
Molly took a peek down and saw that he was just trying to make her feel better. He had noticed sooner than she that she was trembling everywhere.
"Okay Molls, when I tell you to, I want you to lean your foot back as much as you can. Ready? Now."
Molly stretched her foot until it landed on firm ground.
Harrison winced as he let go of the wire with one hand and swung that arm around Molly, placing his hand on the wire once again. "Okay, I got you good. Take the other foot off of my thigh and get the ground with your other foot now."
She did, her body stretched out and looking like a diagonal mark. "Now what?" She asked, her body still trembling, but now from her own strain as her face turned a deepening pink from awkward breathing.
"Now I'm going to swing towards the door and you're going to let go. I'll push you as far as I can and then you have to finish falling back." He explained, then started swinging back and forth, Molly having a death grip on her own wrists.
"Now Molls!" He shouted in her ear. In shock, she let go and the force of his body against hers sent her flying backwards, landing flat on her back with a deep groan.
"Move girl!" Harrison yelled. She managed to roll over a few times until she hit the wall. Laying face down, she stayed that way, cringing when she heard the impact of flesh against tile floor.
"You okay?" He asked her in a worried tone.
"I am never going on that damn death contraption ever again, no matter what Candy Grey says." She said faintly.
Harrison looked skyward with a shake of his head. "Yeah..."
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Molly got out of the car, a sharp cry escaping from the pain of her back. Rubbing her spine, she cringed.
"Dammit Molls, lean against the car. I don't care what you say there could be something really wrong there. You landed hard." Harrison said impatiently, turning her around and pushing her against his truck until it was supporting her, taking some of the strain away from her back muscles.
Shielding her from the rest of the public with his own body, he lifted the back of her shirt and examined her back, where he found bruises of black, purple and blue, stretching a good foot or so from the middle of her back and spreading around it. "Aw man, Molls...you might want to go to the hospital and get it checked out that's a lot of color."
But Molly shook her head, slapping his hands away and pulling her shirt down to conceal her pain. "What about you? Are you hurt?"
He shrugged. "I'm a little sore, but nothing bad." Which was what he always said when he was hurting.
Groaning, she lifted up his own shirt and saw he had spots of bruises all around the worst at his right shoulder and at the base of his back. She had noticed he was taking care not to bump with
right elbow and looked at that it was mostly black from injury.
"You're worse than me. I've seen you limping too you're leg's hurt."
"Wanna make it a date to the hospital? You and me? Ditch this old town and take the world in to our own hands." He teased. Molly sighed, looking towards the restaurant that had Josiah and Marty already in it. She peaked at Harrison's injuries and got back in the truck. Because that's what they have always gone they looked out for each other, even when they didn't really feel like it.
"Might as well call in and have them reserve a room for two." She joked, then relaxed against the leather interior of the seat.
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Marty swirled the ice in her cherry coke with her straw, staring out the window. "So...I don't think they're coming."
Josiah shrugged, enjoying his club sandwich. "Oh well we'll just guilt Harrison and make him pay for our meal. Want some dessert? I could go for that seven layer double chocolate cake..."
Marty grinned. "Sounds great."
Josiah waved over the waiter and ordered a seven layer chocolate cake with a hot fudged sundae, then returned his gaze to Marty.
Feeling uncomfortable with too little to say to the man she actually didn't know very well, she cleared her throat. "So...tell me about yourself, Joe."
"What do you want to know?" He asked.
"I don't care. I mean, all I know is that you're Harrison's friend and that you two wind up in jail a lot and you're willing to sit through a Patrick Swayze marathon, so you must be pretty brave. What else is there to you?"
He shrugged. "I came from nowhere, Utah. Little else to do there but camp out and ride horses...my dad wanted more, so he moved us to a town in Vermont. I was in high school then, and hated Vermont as much as Utah. I wanted California. In high school, I met Harrison in my senior year on the football field. He barely ever showed up for the sport, but he was good at it so they kept him on. I didn't really know Molly until she moved here, but I did see her in the stands whenever Harrison played.
And then we all graduated and Harrison left for the army. I moved to California. But it didn't work. Everything costs way too much. So I moved along the border to Nevada. About six years later I saw Harrison on the streets he had moved here to take over his dad's business. We got together and were good friends. And then Molly came two years later and Harrison's presence with me faded a bit. I had to share him with work, with Molly, with all his girlfriends it was hard to keep up a friendship. But we did. It got easier when you and Molly got close, because Harrison didn't have Molly with him all the time any more, but he got really in to the dating business then, so it all evened out again." Josiah laughed. "You asked about me, not about the history of Harrison and when I knew Molly. Well, I have one older brother Erik, an older sister Anna, and a younger brother Michael. All are pretty cool, but I don't see them much. My parents are still back in Vermont. My sister and Michael are there too, scattered around. And my older brother is in the military. He would like Harrison if they ever met. And uh...well, that's about it. I didn't go to college, I work as a construction worker and a carpenter, the latter a trait I got from my father, and I live here and pretty much, my life is bland and going nowhere. Now tell me about you."