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or read forth, below:

IT’S A MOODY ELEVATOR KIND OF DAY

An oblong thick plastic credit card-sized key grants me entrance to a big-city parking deck behind the bookstore.

Without this key, my work day would be spent inserting handfuls of quarters into disorderly and often malfunctioning parking meters. All this activity to restrain the gleeful meter-monitor person who races to issue overtime penalties to anyone who stays too long downtown.

It is a game I no longer play. I would just as soon pay a monthly fee to the parking deck cartel so that the security of my automobile will be assured.

So, here I am, dodging impatient traffic in order to drive into the deck entrance. I wave the key at an unreachable sensor and something magically causes the creaky wooden blockade arm before me to elevate itself long enough to allow entrance.

I steer the car through six levels of obtusely-stationary vehicles in order to park in a diagonal space on the seventh level.

I gather my jacket and aluminum beverage cup, step onto unpainted concrete, and head for the dreaded elevators.

I stand between two double-doored elevators, punch the slightly askew DOWN button and await my fate.

It is a toss-up as to which elevator will arrive. I listen for metallic pulley sounds and grinding mechanisms as the strains of elevation sound out. I gaze through the adjacent windows at the city below me and scrutinize office and condo windows for signs of life.

To my dismay, it is the left-hand elevator that opens its doors to me. This is the one that recently stopped halfway up, halfway down, stranding a lone passenger till rescuers freed him. This is also the elevator that sometimes opens and closes by itself, sometimes half-opens, then shuts, before I can board it.

Several weeks back, I meet an elevator repair man who is cutting and pasting and oiling the shaft innards to keep them operating. He nervously and apologetically reports that the elevators are old and perhaps past their prime. His assignment is to keep running a hundred or so units around town so that the machinations of commerce and governance keep racing along.

So, today, this morning, I step gingerly through  the open doors and do an about-face. I punch the ONE button and wait to see what adventure will befall me between level seven and level one.

As the doors slide shut, I squint at the posted inspection certificate and note that the elevator has not passed inspection for sixteen months. I wonder whether an elevator loses flavor after its expiration date.

The elevator stops at level six, the doors grind open, no visible being enters, the doors close and the descent resumes. The elevator stops at level five, opens to invisibles or ghosts or spirits, closes again. This continues for each level until Number One pops up.

I hold my breath and await my fate, hoping against hope that the doors will slide apart and allow me to escape the pursuing hounds of imagination

© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed