Service Call
Maintenance Log: Thomas Hale
(Recovered Audio File — Corrupted)
[00:00:01]
Routine service call. Tower 9, car 3. Reported misleveling between 12 and 14. Likely a sensor. Could be the brake magnet. Standard.
[00:00:29]
Ran diagnostics. Everything checks. Doors level. Counterweights good.
The numbers skip and spin wildly until the panel flashes floor 13.
There’s no floor 13 in this building, or in any of the others I maintain.
[00:00:57]
Pressed manual override to clear the glitch.
Car hums and jerks, then goes quiet.
No lift. No descent.
It feels as if the cab is floating.
Weightless.
[00:01:10]
Panel reads a steady 13.
The doors open.
Air Quality: Thick as insulation foam.
Hallway: Everything leans a few degrees off plumb. Blue neon light. No known source. Undetermined distance.
[00:01:23]
Stepped out.
Floor feels soft, not carpet, more like a thick foam.
Fluorescents stutter. It feels like a heartbeat.
The hum shifts pitch when I breathe.
[00:01:36]
Every sound I make repeats a half-second later, slightly off. Warped, as if echoes are chasing themselves through the walls.
[00:01:49]
Smell of ozone, hot metal.
There’s a ringing in my jaw. It’s as if I’m standing under high voltage. Returning to cab.
[00:02:02]
There’s a clipboard on the floor. It’s mine? I have mine in my hands.
There are my initials.
Dated next week?
Note reads: Don’t press reset. My handwriting.
[00:03:13]
Down the corridor: another elevator. Doors open.
Inside. It’s me looking at my clipboard.
Mouth moving. Sounds like a low, syrupy hum.
[00:03:26]
Walls shimmer, layers sliding.
Behind the drywall: Rebar, then another hallway, bleeding through like a double exposure.
Mis-registered.
[00:03:39]
Everything smells like heat and static.
The word RESET flashes urgently across the panel.
[00:04:12]
…
Power surge.
[END OF FILE]
The remaining twenty-seven seconds contain only electrical interference, a rhythmic pulse, measured at sixty hertz. Building records list no Floor 13, and no technician named Thomas Hale on payroll. The elevator in Tower 9 remains operational.
Fantastic creep factor!