Non-fiction

Greetings 'Inkers' it's been over a month since I've had the pleasure of writing with such a wonderful collection of writers and it feels good to be back! I see the collective has grown too, which means the Ink is contagious! I haven't had a chance to read everyone's pieces yet but I'll make time over the weekend. 

Okay - coming back; I thought I'd get a specific prompt and I'm not sure why I thought that at all, maybe in another life I owned a crystal ball. My challenge came from Catherine who writes at: creativecat ... It took a while to leave her blog because when you go there it looks so lovely and refreshing you end up exhaling and reaching down for flowers that aren't actually there. Catherine's prompt is at the end of the post.

I challenged The Drama Mama with "You are an unintentional inspiration." Mama totally destroyed my challenge with: The Most Unlikely Source

I've said enough. 

It's good to be back - here's my offering ...

Pic from: bubblecow.co.uk

The voice on the other end brought less hope than expected. Detective Inspector Thomas sounded like he was trying to come over reassuring; his words were hushed as though he thought someone else might hear us talking which made the situation feel significantly worse. The image of a middle aged, plain clothes police officer, with a cliché of a coffee addiction and bad taste in suits was the picture I put to the voice coming out the intercom.
Over the last twenty minutes I'd been in communication with him and before that, the building’s security chief back when things felt 'straight forward' and being where I was could be put down to 's*@t happening'. The 'happening' part was inevitable, but the 's*@t' part started when I heard the inspector voice. Police never get involved unless it's serious, the questions and lack of answers was beginning to worry me, mainly because I wasn't asking the questions.

"Can you hear anything?"

"What do you mean 'can I hear anything?' What's going on out there?"

"Please try to be quiet," he said. "There have been a few developments since you spoke to the security chief and we're doing the best we can to get you out."

Everything the inspector said sounded as if he was trying not to say something else and he probably sensed my anxiety. "We have our best people working on getting you out. If you do hear anything, let us know as quietly as you can, we’re focused on your safety here."

Mentally I needed to take hold of myself and calm down. A range of reasons why the police were involved cycled through my mind and I tried to think up what other offices besides my therapist’s were on the other floors. I wished I'd paid more attention to the placard detailing the various companies on the outside the building. After you've been going somewhere for several years you don't look at things planted in plain sight.

I wasn’t aware of what was going on out there but if I’d been in the truck the police were using as a base of operations I would have joined them huddled around a screen watching intently in disbelief.

The internal security cameras to the building had everyone scratching their heads.

“Isn’t that-?” One officer began to say, and stopped in mid sentence.

“It can’t be, can it? Isn’t he from, you know, the wots it called …?” Detective Inspector Thomas asked no one in particular.

“Stranger things have happened I guess. Ok maybe not. Just how did all of them get in there, and where from; is what I’d like to know?” After saying it the security chief realised he was one of at least seven people rubbing his forehead.

“Shouldn’t we, you know, go in and do something?” The officer asked, this time finishing a sentence.

The inspector rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s happening on every floor by the looks of it. Surely if we’re all the good guys, including the ones we know to be good guys, then wouldn’t it be okay to, you know, help?” The inspector felt more helpless than he’d ever experienced, and after fifteen years on the force, it wasn’t a feeling he was used to.

“I see bad guys in there too, or at least the ones we know to be bad guys. I think we should let them sort it out, it all looks pretty even.” A short balding officer said, immediately regretting saying anything at all when everyone turned and had to look down to see where the voice had come from.

“That’s a brilliant idea! Okay we wait it out.” Detective Inspector Thomas wasn’t convinced that was the best course of action, but since he’d said it; he thought he might as well not publicly change his mind, fifteen years and all the rest he thought.
 

___________________

The sound of someone shimmying down the cables above took a stranglehold of my attention and I backed away as something heavy landed on the ceiling denting the thin layer between me the brakes, a gear train, the sheave, the electric motor and some other components and parts that my therapist had advised me to memorise in order to curb some of the fear I had of elevators.

I hadn't noticed the seams in the ceiling until a section above me lifted open and a dirty white vest fell through the hole containing an even dirtier looking man.

"What the hell?!" Was all I could ask at the time.

The man on the floor caught his breath grunting a few times before pushing up against a wall in a sort of exhausted slump. Catching enough air he looked up at me as though sizing me up and seemed to decide I was harmless enough. It was the way he shrugged and rolled his eyes.

"How did you get in here?" He asked. "The buildings sealed off."

"I'm stuck!" Pointing out the obvious wasn't a forte of mine but at that moment it felt necessary. "Who the hell are you?"

As his lips moved to form the answer I was waiting for something hit the other side of the doors. Faster than I could think the dirty vested guy sprang to his feet and whipped a gun out the back of his belt in one swift motion. I froze against the wall with the doors to my left, him to my right levelling a very real, very robust looking gun in an extremely business-like fashion. 

I could hear my heart beating out the side of my face.

Without taking his eyes off the door he held the gun in one hand and with the other took a wallet out of his pocket and handed it to me already opened. On the inside was a detective’s shield, NYPD, and a picture of a cleaner looking guy without the five o’clock shade he was sporting on his face at the moment.

BOOM! Something big hit the doors this time, and I dropped the wallet with just enough time to read that Dirty Vest’s name was John.

“Can you climb?!” John shouted as the doors shook again.

“What? Where?”

“Up! We can’t stay here. Whoever’s out there wants in here, so it’s time to leave.”

John picked up his wallet jamming it into his pocket. There was a shallow hand rail that he put a foot on and it was then that I noticed he wasn’t wearing shoes or socks and his feet had dried blood on them.
After some effort he got a foothold and grabbed at the edge of the gap he’d come through, pulling himself up and out the elevator. “Come on,” he said, “time to go.” His outstretched hand an invitation I quietly declined. “Look, you don’t want to be around when that door either opens, or cracks open okay!”

At least eight inches of a blade poked through the seam between the doors as they were prised apart and the sound of lots of what I imagined were bare feet and hooves came from somewhere down a corridor we couldn't see yet.
John had slowly and quietly moved his hand out of sight; replaced by the business end of his gun pointing at the blade.

The knife fell as the gap widened some more and, what looked like a very dry and dirty man fell into the elevator kicking up a cloud of dust. Several arrows shot over his head and imbedded themselves in the wall. The doors slammed shut behind him.

"What the-?"

"… Hell!" John said, finishing my sentence.

More of what I knew now to be arrows impacted the other side of the door but nothing else. We were left with the sound of a lot of people and what sounded like a few horses standing. Waiting. Breathing - on the other side of our thin partition.

"You wanna ask or should I?" John said finally.

"I haven't even worked out why you're here! And at this point I don't think I want to know."

"My wife's in the building.” John said. “There's a situation on the 35th floor and I was the only person who got away. I'm trying to, ya know, save the day or something, or at the very least - help! My name's John, John Ma-."

He was cut off by a cloud of rising dust. "That was a close call right? Where are we and why does this room have buttons inside it?" Our new friend asked cutting John off and denying me an explanation.
When he stood up my first thought was his hat looked pretty cool, he had a weathered look about him like he’d ‘lived’; really seen some stuff, but the whip attached to his belt was over doing it a tad.

Between John and this new character I was beginning to forget where I was, and it dawned on me now I was able to think a bit clearer that this building had 14 floors not 35. A familiar feeling struck me that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. “Hey, what’s your name?” I asked our dusty visitor.

“It’s Ind-.”

Detective Inspector Thomas's voice chimed in before Dusty could answer. "So, er, don't panic but, we think we've figured out what's happening in there, we just don't want to believe it."

"I usually place my prompts/challenges at the beginning, but this time around it felt necessary to place it at the end. Catherine simply said: 'You're stuck in an elevator.' As per usual I wrote some fiction and tried to have a bit of fun with it as always and, I'm grateful for the challenge ... See you all next week!"