I have not been friends with elevators since childhood. For me there was no torment than languishing for several seconds in the unknown while the cabin lifts you to a height or smoothly moves down. At that moment, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of unreality of what was happening, as if everything that was happening around was not with me. There was no greater fear than being on a strange, unfamiliar floor, and this happened several times. In this case, I quickly ran out of the cab and ran down or up, depending on which direction I made a mistake.
With age, the panic horror of "getting in the wrong place" gradually disappeared, he hid somewhere in the depths of the subconscious, as if waiting for the cherished hour. And then one day, memories from childhood vividly and vividly appeared in my memory. I finally remembered everything and understood why I am still waiting with bated breath for the doors to open. It was like a flash of lightning, everything fell into place at once. And the impetus to this insight was my constant inattention. Instead of the 8th floor where my friend lives, I pressed the number "9". The doors opened, I looked around the completely unfamiliar area and went cold: where have I got to ?! Two teenage girls standing by the elevator stared at me in surprise. Calming my heartbeat, I innocently asked where I was. The girls giggled and replied that they were on the ninth floor and entered the elevator. And I remained standing, trying to comprehend what had happened. My memory has finally "loaded" the missing fragments of memories.
I was about 10 years old. In those "blessed" times, we did not know fear and freely moved around the big city without parental supervision, so I returned from school to an empty apartment alone.
I entered the staircase, called the elevator, and pressed the button for the required floor. The doors slammed shut, and the car drove off. Well, how many seconds does it take to get to the 4th floor? Ten, twenty, thirty? It seemed to me that an eternity had passed, and the elevator kept moving and moving up. Finally, it stopped smoothly and the doors opened.
I found myself in an unfamiliar place, it could not be called a residential floor of an apartment building. I will try to describe my feelings. Imagine that you step out of the elevator and find yourself on a completely empty platform. There are no doors or stairs. Only a little in the distance is the edge of a concrete slab visible, and everything around is flooded with bright electric light, although the lamps themselves were not in sight. I don't know why, but I took a step forward and left the cockpit.
The doors immediately slammed shut, and I distinctly heard the lifting mechanism start working, and the elevator went down. I found myself in complete loneliness and silence. By inertia, I took a couple of steps forward. Horror gripped my body, because I'm afraid of heights no less than the elevator! Emptiness and endless loneliness took possession of me at that moment. And it was not the fear of a ten-year-old child, it was the horror of an adult who suddenly realized that he had fallen into a trap. The end of the platform was lost in a blinding electric current and something told me that it was dangerous to move forward. A draft went through my hair, I realized that I was practically on the edge of the abyss. The temptation to look "over the edge", to find out what was there, beyond this line was great. But the saving instinct of self-preservation kept me from this step. Somewhere on the very edge of consciousness the thought was beating that, on the one hand,I can learn something important, but on the other - the risk is too great. At that moment, two entities were arguing in me: a curious child and a future adult, wise by experience. Moreover, as I just remembered, the child was not afraid. It was terrifying for an adult who understood that there are things that you absolutely do not need to know about!
With a sixth sense, I realized that there was Emptiness ahead and if I step there, there would be no way back.
Reason won, I began to slowly retreat to the elevator shaft, trying to get into my own prints on the dusty tiles. At that moment it seemed to me very important and necessary, as if it was impossible to violate anything additionally, having got into this strange place.
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The elevator call button was in place. With a sinking heart, I pressed it and saw how it lit up with a red light. I listened and caught in the distance the noise of an approaching cockpit. The doors opened. In front of me was the usual shabby plastic, painted with obscene words and the familiar burnt buttons. Hastily, as if afraid that reality would suddenly change, I entered the cockpit, examined it carefully again. There were no additional buttons. Everything is as usual: numbering from the first to the twelfth floor, a dispatcher call button, and door locking.
Trying not to rush so as not to confuse anything, I pressed the number "1". For some reason, such a decision seemed to me at that moment the most reasonable. The elevator slammed shut and went down smoothly. This time the movement did not exceed a second. The doors flew open, and a dull mess of the first floor appeared before my eyes: rickety mailboxes and a long unwashed staircase.
I jumped out of the trap and hurriedly, on foot, ran to my fourth floor. For a long time I could not calm down from the experienced fear, and then I huddled under the covers and slept safely until my parents arrived. I didn't tell anyone about what happened. After an alarming forgetfulness, everything that happened faded in my memory and it began to seem to me that the trip to a non-existent floor was just a dream.
In any case, I urged myself to think that way. And now the childhood memory came to life because of a banal mistake. Slowly, as if afraid to stumble, I approached the stairs and began to slowly descend one floor below. No bright unnatural light, no cold breeze for the head and soul. An ordinary marching flight of a multi-storey building.
I sat down on the step, lit a cigarette and thought. Who knows, maybe my life turned out differently if I looked beyond the edge of reality. I was offered to see where the familiar world ends, but I refused. But, you must admit, in such a situation, even an adult is unlikely to dare to take such a decisive step!
Well, but now I remembered and know that this reality has boundaries, where it ends. And now I want to get to this border. I just don't know what combination of buttons to press on the panel so that the elevator takes me to a non-existent floor.