text: “It's really no big deal... I’ve only been trapped in this elevator for... 3 hours.” Gina kept waiting. Her phone had no reception but she was still able to play that weird JRPG with the cute sprite-graphics. She was pretty sure the primary romance plot revolved around a mother and a son who were into each other while they sought to dethrone a dragon-king... Which, you know, yikes obviously. It was fun until her phone ran out of batteries at hour marker number seven. And then an uncomfortable question popped up. She had drained two full cups of coffee this morning before leaving home and she definitely had to pee. Hell, she had to pee seven hours ago when this started but she was so close to being home that she had just held it as she got on the elevator instead of using the lobby bathroom. How long would she have to hold this? Gina alternated the next hour between holding the “Emergency Call” button on the elevator panel and screaming for help. Panic was setting in. What if she peed in the corner right now and then the elevator started working again? That would be pretty embarrassing, right? she didn’t want to be known as “Peed in the elevator girl”, that would be so hurtful. And if she peed in here, what next? How much longer would she wait if she had to number two? No, unacceptable, she wouldn’t, she mustn’t. Those thoughts carried her through the next thirty-seven minutes. And then she fucking peed in the elevator. The one silver lining was that the elevator didn’t immediately start working after she peed. If that had happened, Gina would have cried foul at what had surely been some sort of cruel “Youtube social experiment”. Three hours ago she had this random thought that maybe she shouldn’t have eaten the Chinese food she was bringing home in the first hour. But she had, she had eaten the Chinese food she was bringing home, in the first hour. Now she was nine hours in and she was getting hungry again. Gina frantically dug through her backpack until she found one lone granola bar. It wasn’t even one of the filling and nutritious granola bars, no this one came proudly with chocolate chips. Should she eat it now? No... It would have to wait. Half in a couple of hours and then the second half a couple of hours after that. She was glad that she had been carrying her water bottle which was still about half full. “Yeah, I’m a fucking survivalist badass! You can’t fuck me up, stupid elevator!” She shouted in defiance. Gina was not a “fucking survivalist badass”, Gina was a 32 year old that played laser tag every weekend with her two twin nieces who were both 14. Gina was a financial analyst for a mid-tier electronics distributor. Gina was someone that had seen every episode of The Knick with Clive Owen because she was JUST THAT INTO Steven Soderbergh. **[2] Trapped** In just 37 hours Gina had begun hallucinating some very vivid delusions. “Ggggggina! Gina-wina, you have to get out of here or you’re going to die.” “Shut up, Mister Triangle, I don’t even want to move... my head hurts and I... I know that you can’t be real.” “I am not real, Gina, but you have to get out of here!” Mr. Triangle insisted his voice was high-pitched and raspy but not without joy. Under any other circumstances, Mr. Triangle might be a delight. Gina was laying on the elevator floor with her legs resting vertically along the wall, like she was sitting but the wrong way. The pee smell had gone away at the expense of something... well, something generating a smell not better than pee. Lock a person in a box for two days, no matter what, it doesn't smell great. "I just... I don't think we can get out, Mr. Triangle... I honestly think I might die in this elevator..." Mr. Triangle, the red triangle, about the size of a beach ball, with arms and legs, looked back at her with his dopey, cartoonish grin. "Gina! You need to trust yourself more, you’re so smart! You’re a survivalist badass, remember?" "Don't listen to him Gina... That oaf doesn't know how badly you hurt. How much easier it would be to just end it all by giving up." Laughed a cruel voice. Gina's eyes focused on the new figure in the elevator with them... He was a yellow circle, about the size of a frisbee, with a cold smile on his face. He hadn’t been sitting in ‘Number 2 Corner’ a minute ago and yet there he was now. "Who... who the... what the shit? How many people are in this elevator?” Gina said, her breathing picked up, borderline hyperventilating. “Still just you!” Mr. Triangle. “Oh... right.” Gina said, realizing that she was, in fact, still alone. “But, to answer your earlier question, my dear, I am Smiley-Sun.” The yellow circle said, with his voice which was deep molasses. Slow, dripping, and bitter. “And I think we can both be honest. No matter what this red idiot says, you’re going to die in here.” “Don’t listen to him Gina, you can’t give up, you can still get out of here!” Mr. Triangle persisted. “Stop it, you fool, you’re being an idiot! Shut up!” Smiley-Sun shouted, suddenly and aggressively. The outburst was surprising to Gina who fumbled to sit upright. She looked from Mr. Triangle to Smiley-Sun and she saw that the yellow circle was pointing a gun at Mr. Triangle. “Woah, guys, can we please de-escalate this situation? There is no need to ge-” BANG! The gunshot interrupted her mid-sentence and the sound of it echoed over and over infinitely in the small elevator. Her ears ringing as she forced herself to her feet. “MISTER TRIANGLE!” Gina shouted as her friend clutched at his side and toppled, face down, onto the floor of the elevator. She rushed over and flung herself in front of Mr. Triangle, flipping him over so that she could see her friend. He was gasping for breath, shaky. “You gotta stop him, Gina, he’s gonna kill us both!” Gina rounded on Smiley-Sun, his smile dropped the second he saw her balled up fists. In that moment, he dropped the gun and voided his bladder at the same time. Gina threw herself at him. Gina had never been violent with anyone before in her entire life but she pummeled into that stupid, yellow idiot with both of her hands. She repeatedly slammed fist after fist into Smiley-Sun, knocking out teeth, swelling shut and eye, until she finally began to hear bones splintering in his face. Her hands were bruised and bloodied by the time she got off of Smiley-Sun, he could barely muster breaths into the pulp of his face. “Fuck you, Gina, you’re going to die in her-” BANG Gina had picked up Smiley-Sun’s gun and had returned the favor for Mr. Triangle, putting one round right in between Smiley’s eyes. Smiley-Sun never talked again. He had never actually talked before either, technically. “Mr. Triangle, tell me you’re ok buddy!” Gina said as she spun back to her friend, dropping the gun. He did not look ok. By human standards or triangle standards. He was missing a huge chunk from his side and a spider-web pattern of cracks spun itself out from that missing chunk. He had lost his vibrant red coloring and was beginning to look a sickly pink. But he was still alive. He coughed a couple of times and spat some blood on the ground as he smiled at Gina. “You did it Gina, now you gotta save yourself... It's too late for me but you can still make it!” “Mr. Triangle, we’ve been over this... There is no way out of here!” “Gina...” Mr Triangle paused to have a coughing fit in which a disturbing amount of blood came out. “You’ve seen every single Steven Soderbergh movie and yet you’ve forgotten his best one. Ocean’s Eleven. These elevators always have panels in the ceilings, you just need to climb up and out through that. Then you just climb up to the nearest door and pry it open.” Gina paused for a moment. Of course. So dumb, how could she have forgotten? “Of fuck... I just remembered, I don’t think that was Ocean’s Eleven at all... Just... Just go and be free Gina!” And with that, Mr. Triangle breathed his last breath. Gina looked up, her hands were still shaky and still covered in blood and bruises but she had resolve now. She could do this. The ceiling of the elevator looked to be a paneled drywall sub-ceiling, she was able to lift the panels up and expose the actual metal chassis of the elevator above them. After the second panel she finally found the service hatch. She tried the handle and it was locked, of course. But it wasn’t indestructible. Balancing precariously on the rails along the wall of the inside the elevator Gina was able to get the height and leverage she needed to beat the service hatch with her hands. She pounded on the thing until her hands hurt, painfully aware of how little food and water she’d had in the last two day. She kept punching the door and eventually she felt the hinges give against the frame. After an hour and a half, almost 40 total hours spent in the elevator, Gina finally tasted fresh air. Well, relatively fresh. It was still just the elevator shaft but she was able to lift herself up and out of the elevator after what felt like an eternity. She looked back down to Mr. Triangle one last time and was surprised to see he wasn’t there anymore. And then she remembered that he never really was there anyway. Mr. Triangle and Smiley-Sun had just been hallucinations. She shrugged after realizing that the catharsis was kind of diminished with two-thirds of her elevator party never really actually existing. **[3] Prologue** Gina made it up to her apartment, called 911 and promptly fainted at her own door. She was hospitalized for several days as her family retained an attorney to sue the building owners for never hooking up the emergency call button to any sort of responder service and then sending the property manager away on a holiday weekend without any backup. Other tenants had just taken the stairs, thinking that the elevator was out of service, never even aware that just feet away from them a woman was suffering. Gina suffered no long term health problems from the malnourishment but a psychologist gleefully diagnosed her with a brand-new type of PTSD after she told them about Mr. Triangle and Smiley-Sun. Medical journals actually featured her story and she was a minor celebrity for a while on top of winning the settlement against her building owners. Everything ended up being just fine for Gina. She lived, mostly, happily ever after.