The Man in the Elevator goes up. The Man in the Elevator goes down. All day, every day. All night, every night. The Man in the Elevator is always there even when he's not. Have you gotten onto an elevator alone and as you push the button are suddenly filled with dread? What if you get stuck? What if you plummet to your death? You would hear a cable snap. Then, you're heart would drop. Then, you would drop. What if the next person to get on is a serial killer and you're his next victim? If you died in this little metal box would they find you? How long would it take someone to even notice that you'd disappeared? These thoughts, your thoughts, they did not come from you. These thoughts are the whispers of the Man in the Elevator. You can feel the air as he pushes the words through thin lips. But when you turn your head, you are alone. This, of course, makes the dread that much more palpable. He likes it when things become palpable. The Man in the Elevator knows that nothing good ever becomes palpable. Usually fear or hate or disgust. How does The Man know this? How does anyone know anything: experience. He had ridden ever elevator to every top floor and sub basement. He may or may not like the name Otis. He has always never been there all of the time. In mirrored windows and panels, you can feel his stare from behind you. You can almost picture his smile, a surgically precise grin, his lips pulled slightly apart by high cheekbones sitting below sunken eyes. And those eyes! His eyes are swollen black orbs flecked with starlight and a soft madness playing in the inky dark. They swivel in their sockets as if they had minds of their own. But they do not. They are directed by an unhealthy and unwell mind, but a mind possessed by a sinister and sharp intellect. The Man in the Elevator is honed and polished by timelessness. Your nose will wrinkle at his scent. His clothes, his skin, his being is a softly permeating reek of dust and disinfectant and your grandmother's home. You know the smell. It immediately fills you with nostalgia and the need to run. But The Man in the Elevator is beside the point, isn't he? There is nothing you can do about him. He'll always be there playing in the corner of your eye, his breath, ripe with the slightly sweet smell of decay cloyingly dancing next to your ear. When the bell dings or the tone peals and the door slowly hiss open, he's there. While the numbers go up, while the numbers go down, he's there. When you finally exit, assuming you do, he's there. You'll step off, offering a silent prayer whether you want to or not, and the doors will close. When you turn around, when there is only a sliver of elevator left between the closing doors, then, and only then, will you see him. You'll say to yourself, half heartedly reassuringly, that your eyes were just playing tricks on you. But it's not your eyes' game that you're playing; it's The Man in the Elevator's. And he thinks games are really fun…