The Elevator

By Don Broyles

What happens when you find yourself trapped in an elevator, located in a large shopping mall, for 15 years?  Surrounded by assorted misfits and invisible to the thronging crowds in the mall, you must learn to cope with the dangers of psychotic, murderous fellow-occupants and a flatulent dog who emits greasy farts.  Follow the absurd and humorous exploits of 11 unique individuals as they attempt to cope with their situation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Don Broyles
• Release date: Aug 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393567387

Don Broyles

I was born in Nashville, Tennessee and moved to different areas of the United States, due to my father being in the Air Force.  We lived 3 years in Japan and in Hawaii for almost 2 years.  Upon his retirement, our family settled down in Arkansas (where my father was born), and where I lived for about 30 years. I have a degree in English and was working on my Ph.D in English (Miami University; Oxford, Ohio), but later resigned from that program.  I’ve had various jobs, to include Publications’ Editor for the Arkansas Press Association (APA), bookseller, certified teacher of English, Photographer for Bill Clinton (when he was Governor of Arkansas), and oyster shucker.  For 10 years, I was a moderator at Mobileread, a site devoted to ebooks and ebook technologies.  Although still a moderator there, I’ve chosen to redirect my energies toward writing. Back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, I had a number of prose poems published in Eldritch Tales and in a few other publications. I have one book out - from Creativia - which is available from Amazon:  “Doughboy and Other Strange Tales.”  My favorite writers include José Saramago, early Claude Simon, J.M.G. Le Clézio, Javier Marías, Philip Roth, Robert Walser, Hermann Ungar, Haruki Murakami, Brian Lumley, Joyce Carol Oates, Kazuo Ishiguro, Marcel Proust, Paul Leppin, Ramsey Campbell, James Herbert, Bryan Smith, Lord Dunsany, and Clark Ashton Smith, among others.  As you can see, my reading interests are diverse and range from Modernism to Post-Modernism, along with a healthy appreciation for Fantasy and Horror.  I would definitely classify my fiction as Bizarro/Absurdist in nature.

Book preview

Prologue

For fifteen years, we have been trapped in this elevator situated in a large shopping mall. Our world passes through light and shadow, cycling through an endless supply of hours, days, and years. We remain captive, our nostrils filled with the aromas of soap, toothpaste, underarms, and hairspray. Nervous tics accumulate, stretching our faces into strange contortions that defy logic. Itching toes curl and uncurl like restless slugs. Days and nights cycle through the years in unvarying degrees of ordinariness. We shuffle back and forth, movement that takes us nowhere. We remain smothered in this small enclosure, measuring not the days but the accumulation of years.

Yet still we remain here, nose-to-armpit, buttock-to-crotch, our closeness like a heavily guarded secret that only we can share. The world outside this elevator continues: The spill of cold drinks, the noise of raucous laughter, the shuffling of endless feet, and the blaring sound of Muzak. Occasionally the music changes. Sounds of heavy breathing and anxious gasps fall upon us, sounding like porn music from the 1970s. Above us, on the fourth floor, we hear screams of happiness. On the first floor, hidden in shadowed crevices, we hear the dulcet tones of lovers’ whispered endearments, their sighs soft and distant like rolling waves scattering across a beach at night. Within the shadowed confines of this mall, we hear the ever-present sounds of circus animals - tigers, lions, monkeys, elephants - their cries forlorn and lonely, in the next moment full of anger. These are the wonders of life, yet we feel no delight in this awareness. What we feel and experience are broken sobs and empty dreams, all coming from the interior of the elevator. We hear it all, captured for eternity…or at least, for the eternity that surrounds us.

Year One

Those first few minutes we were trapped in the elevator, we were jovial and full of good humor. I remember petting Zooey’s head, for even a dog needs reassurance, although I barely escaped being bit. We knew we would be rescued, that it was merely a matter of time before a maintenance engineer or someone from the fire department would smash open the glass doors and liberate us. Local coverage of the event was sure to spread good feelings throughout the mall, perhaps resulting in a free McDonald’s hamburger for every person trapped here. Or maybe a lucrative advertising contract for Zooey selling canned dog food. The point is that there would be a sense of relief from all responsible parties involved in the day-to-day functioning of the mall, that in the end a feeling of forgiveness would prevail with much backslapping and hearty guffaws.

Yet that never happened.

It was not the failure of our cell phones that first made us aware of our situation. In fact, Flem Pickering - he of the upswept silver hair, large-veined scarlet jowls, and immense beer belly - had forgotten to charge his cell phone the night before, an action he says that often caused stress in his marriage. If it’s not one thing, it’s another, he admitted sourly, the ugly animus on his face unable to hide the upturned twist of anger mixed with an undeniable twinge of regret. After one year into our confinement, no one really cared anymore about the repercussions of his failed marriage.

We then pounded upon the doors in our efforts to open them.

We yelled.

We waved.

We tried everything we could think of to get someone’s attention.

Jimmy Flagstaff, a teenager, suggested that we all pull down our pants and expose our private parts to the hundreds of milling shoppers closest to the elevator, an idea which elicited immediate squeals of protest from the women.

Although now that I think about it, Carol Clune, the prostitute, seemed to be less vocal in this regard.

I should mention that Carol Clune is in her mid-twenties and has a figure that can best be described as svelte. And slinky. I think every man here lusts after her, except Phil Brinker, banker and ‘wanna-be’ comedian. Oddly enough, Brinker has never actually said anything funny, which makes me realize that he is most likely a failed comedian.

At first we joked about the situation, our laughter nervous but contained. Phil Brinker, the banker, said that the experience would strengthen us. This is strange, now that I think about it, since he was the first one to go insane. When he attacked Carol Clune, the prostitute, I had no choice but to pummel him with his briefcase (which he still held tightly in one hand) as he proceeded to fondle and knead her breasts with his other hand, seemingly oblivious at my efforts to control his behavior. Barton Bader, a health care professional, held his arms as I struck Brinker with increasing gusto over the head. Finally subsiding, Brinker cowered in the corner with quiet whimpering noises. Carol Clune, her dress ripped, tried to gather the tattered remnants of fabric about her, but her actions did little to hide the creamy smoothness of shoulders and breasts. Even though the elevator is completely surrounded by glass, no one in the shopping mall paid any attention to the commotion going on in the elevator.

It was as if we did not exist.

We then commenced once again to pound forcefully upon the glass, our cries ineffectual, as if we were nothing more than disembodied entities circling the airy sphere of space.

We tried to formulate a reason for such behavior, but tempers were already at a breaking point as we jostled one another in our efforts to get someone - anyone! - to realize that we were trapped.

How can they not see us? Flem Pickering said. A toothpick dangled limply from his fleshy lips. I had no idea how he had retrieved it from his pocket, since the elevator was so closely packed.

Maybe they do see us, Phil Brinker said, his lachrymose eyes alive with emotion.

Anything’s possible, Maurice Percy stated in that obnoxious way that highlights the fact that he teaches high school English. It it is clear that he thinks he is the master of everyone.

The elevator continued to rise and fall as it went from floor to floor - from the lowest floor to the highest floor - and then started over again.

Endlessly.

It is true that Carrie Faultenberg - she of the cadaverous face and popping eyes - did not wish to share her Goo-Goo Clusters with anyone in the elevator. Although this might appear to be a selfish move on her part, I can fully understand and sympathize with her reasons for wanting to keep the Goo-Goo Clusters for herself. After all, she is the one who paid for them and she is the one who visited the Le Chocolate Shoppe located on the third floor of the mall. Additionally, Goo-Goo Clusters taste delicious. I know that if I had purchased a box of Goo-Goo Clusters for myself that I would have refused