My Building Has No Basement

...but somehow, the elevator just went past the ground floor.

I am not entirely sure that I will ever see natural light again; I may be destined to bask in this artificial, almost sickly glow until my being has expired. This is for one simple reason: my building has no basement.

Although I am aware, deep down, that it was not long ago, it feels as though eons have passed since I stepped foot into this elevator. Too many groceries to take the stairs with, whispered my last fleeting thought before I turned down the hall and made my way to the metal seal that has now solidified my fate - or, perhaps, is shielding me from it. I know not which.

I entered this small chamber barely conscious, head underwater, mind dominant over body. Absentmindedly I thumbed the button for my floor, and felt the movement of my surroundings, a heaving that seemed a bit more forceful than usual. As I let the wheezing and whirring of the elevator numb my mind further still, I realized that my ascent seemed...wrong. Halted. Strained. It was as if the earth’s gravitational pull had suddenly intensified, and I was being pulled downward against my will by a force out of my own control. The elevator suddenly lurched, and my body with it, as I heard and felt something shift. With a click, a groan, a sputter, I felt my ascent convert into a descent.

This was, for the time being, merely improbable. For a few moments I chalked it up to a technical malfunction. But I continued down. And down. And down. And it was then, with a flicker of the fluorescent lights and a second churning of my insides, that something dawned on me. The elevator had been travelling down for far too long. The ground floor could not have possibly been this distant. My situation had metamorphosed from improbable to physically impossible.

My anxiety only worsened as my mechanical quarters pressed on ever downward. How much time had passed? Five minutes? Ten? Fifteen? Even longer? What if what felt like mere minutes had, in actuality, been hours? Or days, or weeks? I was suddenly ripped from my stupor by a sound which I, at first, perceived as coming from the elevator itself. It was not so much a scraping but a squealing. Like the sound made when a bare hand is dragged slowly down the surface of a window, skin sticking disgustingly to the glass. From what I could tell, it had come from the wall directly to my left. The one I was currently leaning against. Uncomfortably, I detached from the railing and shifted to the other side of the increasingly claustrophobic enclosure. I had, by now, dropped my groceries and was leaning against the thick metal bar which lines the elevator’s interior, in a futile attempt to ease the squirming nausea which ebbed away at my stability. A cereal box mascot stared at me, smiling grotesquely from within one of the many plastic bags on the floor. As I broke eye contact, another sound nearly made me jump. The same shrill, skin-on-glass noise from before, only this time on the wall to my right - but with an audible and organic slap preceding it, like a hand being slammed onto the elevator's metal exterior and slowly, dreadfully, being pulled down. All reason deserted me immediately. I pushed the railing away, stumbled back, tripped over a bag, its contents spilling out onto the dingy maroon carpet. As I lay gasping for air, I felt the floor beneath me vibrating - almost pulsing - to accompany my continuous journey, slipping ever downward. I drew my knees up to my chest, and waited. I waited for another sound. Another lurch. Another sputter. Something. Anything to break this maddening groundward sink. But as I sat, frozen in anticipation, I began to wonder...what happens when - or if - I stop?

I did not have long to wonder. Or, perhaps, I did. Time has, at this point, lost any placement in my mind. But anyway, after an unintelligible continuance, I did indeed stop. The elevator lurched once more, sputtered, groaned, and finally, halted. In the deafening, suffocating silence which followed, I thought I could feel the metal box swaying on its cables, slowly, ominously - but perhaps it was only in my head. I still feel it swaying now, back and forth, vexatiously, almost imperceptibly, back and forth. Ages passed before the silence was abruptly and swiftly assassinated by the sound of something on the elevator doors - a pound. A single strike, as if a closed fist was demanding entry. It was followed by another. And another. More and more still, in quick succession, growing ever more rapid, until a cacophony of pounding and slapping and dragging and scrabbling on metal drew my hands up to my head and clasped them firmly against my ears. It took me several seconds to realize that I was screaming, but when I did I found there was nothing I could do to stop the frenzied shouts from issuing from within me. Only when the deranged percussional symphony finally ceased did I, at last, clamp my teeth together. No sounds have manifested since. I have waited alone and silent in my metal coffin for an eternity I do not know the duration of. There are dents on the elevator doors, as if who-or-whatever was pounding on it earlier managed to weaken its constitution. My building does indeed have something - something - which lies underneath it. I think I may have run upon it by mistake.

...the doors have just slid open. And I see nothing.