The Elevator Catastrophe

by Whitney Taylor

Written for Engl 3040 Literary Nonfiction, ETSU Fall 2004

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About the author:

Whitney Taylor is a senior Political Science major at East Tennessee State University. Whitney is pre-law with hope of attaining her law degree from the University of Tennessee. She now lives in Johnson City, Tennessee.

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I despise elevators, all types; old, new, carpeted, air conditioned, stuffy, crowded, empty. Ever since the catastrophe of June 2004 my heart skips a beat when I step inside of any elevator. It all leads back to a crazy trip I took with my girlfriends to Myrtle Beach.

The trip was for my friend Brooke‘s bacholerette party. With her, Brooke brought her three bridesmaids (Amanda, Leigh Anne and Laura), her maid-of-honor (Ashley), and three of her other closest girlfriends, (Jordan, Caroline and I). Eight girls in all. The weather was nice on the beach that Saturday morning, but in the afternoon it began to look cloudy. I was on the beach with Laura at about one o’ clock when I became hungry and decided to go up to the room to grab a snack. The rest of the girls were (too big of babies) to get near the sand. On the way to my room I saw the rest of the bridal party and decided to leave my towel and beach chair with them at the pool. I will be right back after all, I thought as I laid my things down. If only I had paid attention to the sky and had brought all my things up, this whole catastrophe would not have happened.

I hurried on up to my room to discover Laura already there making herself a sandwich. I followed her example without looking once outside. When I did finally sit down I noticed a swarm of black clouds that had come to rest over the beach. “Uh-oh” I said as I looked outside, “It’s going to rain, should we go get our stuff?”

Laura glanced up from her sandwich at the weather outside and nodded, “We’d better.” Laura grabbed the room key and headed towards the door as I walked briskly behind her. Little did I know the tragedy that awaited my group and me.

As Laura and I rode down our five floors on the elevator, I wondered if any of the girls were paying even the remotest bit of attention to the weather. After debating on their awareness, I quickly decided that the girls probably were not paying attention and that my things would be soaked very soon unless I could come get them. “If only this elevator moved faster” I told Laura and she nodded yes in reply. As the elevator door opened, Laura and I gasped at the loud thunder that rattled the resort. We quickly raced to our things and the girls, and soon the entire resort seemed to pick up upon the notion that there was soon coming a downpour. Chairs and towels flew everywhere as people hurried to beat the rain. My girls and I were the first to the elevator, and all six of us raced in. People were clustered together as the waited on any elevator to be open, not one guest wanted to take the stairs.

As we entered the elevator carrying our beach bags, towels and chairs I nodded to a middle-aged woman wearing a sun visor. “We barely escaped the rain!” I exclaimed to her. I noticed she carried a beach bag similar to Amanda’s, and had a towel wrapped around her lower half. I looked to my left and saw four older women grouped together all carrying coolers and towels, in full on beach gear. In the middle of the elevator stood a man in his fifties with blue and turquoise trunks on and not much else. The eight of us girls piled into the elevator and closed the door.

Immediately the doors opened back up and a heavy-set man with unpleasant, easily braid-able back hair walked into the elevator. “I could make a sweater out of that” Jordan whispered as she giggled profusely. The hairy man also brought his six kids with him. I watched the lady with the visor’s eyes get larger and larger as the children just kept piling in. “Umm..I think that their are enough people in here” Laura said as she watched the children swarm the elevator. It seemed that everyone except for the hairy man knew that the elevator was full to it’s capacity.

Amanda yelled “There are too many damn people on this elevator!” repeatedly to no avail. Our fate was sealed as the man ignored our cries and pressed the third floor button. The entire elevator held their breaths as the doors slammed close.

Suddenly, the elevator shook, buckled and then sunk into the first floor, caving under the extreme weight. I looked around as the entire crowd in the elevator gasped and began to panic. It was as if a wave of fear had smacked each person in the face. Immediately the man in blue trunks began pushing on the door trying to pry it open. The children also began pressing the call help elevator button which rang a bell each time you pressed it. For some reason the children thought that it would help to press the button repeatedly as if the people waiting on the ground floor would not hear us directly outside. Over and over they pressed the button, ringing consumed the elevator, overwhelmed all of the passengers with annoyance. The hairy man just stood with his arms crossed in front of his chest and his eyes forward. The lady with the visor began to panic and confessed “I am very claustrophobic. My girlfriends and I decided to try to calm her down by talking about her bag she received similar to Amanda’s as a free gift with purchase.

“I have a bag like that!” Amanda said.

“Really?” The lady said gasping for air.

“Did your shoes fit? Mine didn’t and I had to take them back. It really pissed them off” Amanda stated as she felt the fabric.

“Mine were fine” she replied, and finally seemed to relax with the conversation.

The elevator had no air conditioning, and was getting stickier by the minute, not to mention unbearable because of the constant ringing. I began to wonder when we would run out of air. I quickly surveyed the elevator and decided just who would die first. I hoped it was the hairy man that got us into this mess and not me. I looked over to my right to discuss this issue with Laura, but I discovered Laura was smashed against the back of the elevator, trying her best to stay calm because she was extremely claustrophobic also. She could not hold on for long, overcome with anxiety Laura began to shake uncontrollably. Caroline noticed Laura the same time I did, and I told her “to bend her head down between your legs and breathe.”

We practically threw her to the ground as Caroline added “Laura, here look at this magazine and have a drink of this drink,” Caroline quickly shoved her a copy of Vogue and a Cherry Limeaide. Laura faintly nodded and began to fan herself with the Vogue , ripping out page by page as she desperately tried to calm herself down.

I looked around the elevator to see the four women silently crying together, then to Brooke, the bride-to-be who was inching away and wrapping up tighter in her towel to get away from the hairy man that was getting way too close to her body. Suddenly the blue trunk man said “Here, let me use your towel” and spastically grabbed Brooke’s towel of protection and used it to try to push the door open, relentless in his journey to open the door.

With the time getting longer and nerves pushed to the limit, the children began to panic. A five-year old boy looked up at his dad with fear washed trough his face “Is someone going to come get us?” Right after he finished the question the kid threw up on the floor. It went like this “Is some one going to come get us..blech” all over the floor and then his siblings quickly threw over a towel in hopes to camouflage the fresh puke.

“Great, just add another smell into the non ventilated elevator” I said quietly to Caroline as I began to wonder if anyone would come and get us. What was five minutes felt like an eternity, but I knew that if I lost it, than others would really began to panic as well, and we would be of no use. I looked at Laura still on the floor annihilating Caroline’s magazine, shuddered at the sound of the bell being rung twenty more times, and then looked at the blue trunk man plying the door and suddenly..

The doors opened and a whiff of fresh air came pouring in. A security guard was on the other with some sort of iron device, from what I remembered I thought he was God coming to take me home. As relief passed through the elevator, the crowd poured out. I smiled at the visor lady and went outside to gather myself. The six of us decided to take the stairs for the rest of the trip, and I now am a firm believer in Sarte since the incident, especially his belief that “Hell is other people.” Sarte must have been stuck on an elevator with a overweight hairy man too, God bless you Sarte.