I hate elevators.
Always have. Something about being suspended in a metal box while a bunch of ancient pulleys decide your fate feels like playing Russian Roulette with gravity. Add in flickering lights, broken muzak, and a general sense of vertical claustrophobia, and yeah—hard pass.
Unfortunately, my next delivery didn't care about my feelings.
The app buzzed at exactly 6:06 a.m.
NEW DROP: CLIENT: UNKNOWN. LOCATION: THE ELEVATOR BUILDING. PACKAGE: CLASSIFIED. CAUTION: FLOOR FLUCTUATION DETECTED.
"Floor fluctuation?" I muttered, already regretting everything.
The building wasn't on any map. I checked twice. Still, when I turned the corner past what I thought was an abandoned lot, there it was—a towering, brutalist monstrosity that looked like someone had asked an architect, "What if concrete could scream?"
No doors. No lobby. Just an open elevator shaft with one tiny glowing button: UP.
I held the package tight and pressed the button.
The elevator arrived without sound. It didn't ding or open with a polite slide—it peeled itself open like a reluctant mouth, and I stepped in before I could talk myself out of it.
There were no buttons inside. Just a flickering LED panel that said: FLOOR: ?
I sighed. "Of course."
The doors closed. The elevator rose.
And kept rising.
No music. Just the hum of motion and the occasional mechanical groan, like the building had indigestion.
Then it stopped.
The doors opened.
Floor 6? Or maybe 60? Hard to say. The number panel said: GOOD LUCK.
I stepped out into a hallway covered in old wallpaper, floral and faded, like a haunted grandmother's idea of comfort. The walls breathed. I swear. Inhale. Exhale. Slow and steady.
A single door at the end of the hallway bore the package symbol.
I walked toward it.
Halfway there, the lights above me blinked out.
A whisper: "Wrong delivery."
I turned. No one.
I kept going.
The package in my hands pulsed. Not glowed—pulsed. Like it was nervous. Or excited.
I reached the door.
It opened before I knocked.
Inside? A mirror.
Just a mirror. Old. Ornate. Big enough to see your whole life in.
And in the reflection?
Not me.
Well—a me. But different. Gaunt. Pale. Eyes like sinkholes.
Mirror-Me reached out and tapped the glass.
I flinched.
Then he mouthed the words: "Wrong floor."
The elevator behind me screeched.
I turned to run.
The hallway was gone. In its place: stairs. Infinite stairs spiraling down. Or up. Hard to say.
The mirror shattered behind me.
I took the stairs.
Every landing I passed had a floor number, but they were gibberish: FLOOR $!#! or FLOOR NULL or just : )
I stopped at one marked: FLOOR: RAY
I opened the door.
It was my old apartment. Not the haunted current one. The old one. Before the job. Before everything.
Sitting inside: the Manager.
Sipping coffee. Reading a manual.
"Been waiting," he said without looking up.
I stepped inside. The air felt... realer. Heavier.
"You sent me to a building that eats people."
He nodded. "Yes. And?"
"And I saw a mirror version of me."
He closed the manual. "Did it try to kill you?"
"No."
"Then you're lucky. Some versions are less polite."
I sat across from him.
"What's the point of this delivery?"
He tapped the package I was still holding. I hadn't even realized I still had it. The label had changed.
Now it read: TO: WHO YOU ALMOST BECAME
"Every courier reaches this point," he said. "The elevator is a filter. Each floor is a possible detour. You got lucky. You only met one."
"What would've happened if I opened the package there?"
"Then he would've replaced you. Shift over."
I swallowed hard.
He stood, stretched, and motioned to the door.
"Your job isn't over. The real client's still waiting."
I walked back out.
The elevator was waiting again. Its panel now read: FINAL DELIVERY
I stepped inside.
The doors closed.
And we began to descend.