The Elevator Of Doom At The Big Pointy Building

I'm Faux Chefing at The Big Pointy Building. I have avoided The Elevator Of Doom all night because too many staff have been trapped in there in the past, sometimes for hours at a time. But tired from running up and down the stairs all night, I think to hell with it, I'll probably be all right for this one trip. I step inside the elevator. The doors start to close when two cute Russian or Polish waitresses dash towards me asking me to hold the elevator. I oblige. They enter. The doors close.. roll credits and cheesy music.

It's just like the opening of a '70s disaster movie, isn't it?

Inside. For a long while The Elevator Of Doom does nothing. We smile at each other nervously. TEOD shudders but doesn't exactly move in an upward direction.

"This is the dodgiest elevator in the world," I say in my best Steve McQueen. "I just hope we come out of this alive."

The girls giggle nervously and smirk demurely and lasciviously simultaneously, obviously in awe of my uncanny resemblance to Steve McQueen.

"Sometimes," I say ruggedly, "it kind of groans a kind of... ominous groan."

One of the girls, a real cutie, she tells me she's heard that groan before.

"Are ve moovink?" she adds. "I cannot tell if ve are moovink."

The elevator starts to move, like an old man getting shakingly to his feet from the toilet where he's just spent half an hour taking a really disappointing dump that he's suddenly not really convinced ever happened because ever since this memory wotsit started to... "What the hell am I doing here?" the old man shouts, "and where in the Goddamn hell are my pyjama pants?"

So. Anyway. Elevator is on the move. We're on our way, and I can't help thinking again that I just hope we get out of this one alive.

There's a moan that sounds like a groan. The very kind of ominous groan we'd just been talking about. In fact it's the very same one. It's an ominous groan of doom that echoes ominously into the doomy room of the hollow void of the elevator shaft and I physically have to slap my Steve McQueen dopplegangy face before I think once again... that I just hope we get out of this one alive.

You know that distance you hold your thumb and forefinger apart to indicate to someone a very small distance? That's how close I come to totally pooping my pants when TEOD wobbles to a stop, then drops sphincter-twitchingly to a stop a lot more than a thumb and forefinger distance of littleness. I'm guessing we've dropped maybe half a floor. Half a floor or two Russian or Polish shrieks of terror long. Either way, both are the same length.

The elevator bounces, and I get really tired of thinking that I just hope we get out of this one alive.

The girls look at me, like I'm supposed to know what to do. I look back at them and think, you think if I wasn't allowed to scream I wouldn't have? You think I'm enjoying this? You think I have a freaking clue what to do? Right now I'm about as heroic as an old man on the crapper wondering what's happened to his pyjama pants! Back off with the gender expectation stuff, cute Eurobitches!

Then I realise I have a self-delusion to uphold.

"Relax, girls," I Steve McQueen to them. "Everything's going to be all right. Just leave this up to me. There's a button, and I'm going to poke it in a reassuringly masculine way."

There's a button with a picture of an old fashioned phone on it, so I poke it, in an old fashioned, reassuringly masculine way."

"Broken Elevator Guy," a voice tells me.

"It's Ste... Lee, known in some circles as Black Rainbow but that's another blog post. Anyway, this elevator is stuck again so you better get someone down here ASPA... PSAP? SAPA... look just get someone down here as soon as possible because I really wanna get out of this one alive."

"Sure thing Steely Black Rainbow, you sit tight, we're on our way. Or as we like to abbreviate, mainly to save time in moments of emergency such as these - WOOW!"

Suddenly nothing happens. Then something happens. A supervisor calls down the hellish empty nothingness of the little crack between the elevator doors but from somewhere above or below us... "Helloooooo....? Are you stuck? Who is stuck in the elevatooooor...?"

"Olga is stuck in zee elevator," one of the girls - whose name I deduce is Olga - calls through the crack in the elevator doors. "And Olga alzo is stuck, and alzo zees amazink man who looks ever so much like that dead actor... agh, vot voz hees name?'

"I think you're thinking of Steve McQueen."

"Veencent Price! Spittink image! It eez eencredible!"

"Who else is trapped inside the elevatooooor....? Vincent?"

"It's Lee," I shout through the crack just as the elevator drops another two Olga shrieks and one Australian fuckinghellthisisridiculous.

"Just for the record," I call to the voice on the outside when my ears have stopped ringing, "it was not Lee who did all that shrieking. We clear on that? Not Lee. Lee did not shriek."

I settle in for the long haul. I look forward to getting to know Olga and Olga and maybe forming lifelong bonds. Maybe we will look forward to reunions long into the future to celebrate our survival. Maybe they will one day bring their kids to these reunions and introduce them to me as Steely Black Rainbow and Steely Black Rainbow.

Then again, maybe the doors will open a very short time later, and I will find that we do, indeed, get out of this one alive... for now.