All the way on the sixteenth floor, tenants often hear singing from the elevator shaft. Sometimes blues, sometimes ballads, sometimes the voice gets down with the funk.

You weren’t thinking at eleven o’clock with a lump in your throat and a run in your drugstore black nylons. This wasn’t where you’d meant to be, and when the empty car closed its doors around you, you stopped choking back and cried to the whish whish-whish descending too.

Bleary-eyed, disoriented, you think you hear music – yes, isn’t that a man’s soft voice? The elevator spirit croons “You’re beautiful, it’s true…” all the way to the ground floor.

100% serious, guys. My building’s elevator is haunted.

Written in response to this week’s Six Sentence Stories challenge. You can read others’ takes on this week’s them “SPIRIT,” here. 

Featured image modified from a photo by Daniel Lin.