By Zack Wentz
All Rights Reserved.
You see the man is stuck in the elevator alone, between floors, and this has been the case for some time, although the man is not aware how long, for there is no clock available in the elevator, nor does he possess a watch, phone, or other timepiece, but when the elevator ceased moving he was, initially, not even annoyed, considered it just some momentary glitch in the system that would shortly be repaired or pass on its own, “fix itself” in the mysterious way these kinds of things sometimes do, and the elevator’s movement would resume, but whether he was originally traveling up or down he cannot remember, for there are no numbers lit indicating his floor selection, and he can’t seem to recall what floor contained the room he was either leaving or going to, and, oddly enough, the man can’t seem to remember why he is in this particular building at all, finds nothing familiar about the elevator itself, and seems to remember, vaguely, at his usual place of business and living quarters always using the stairs, so maybe a mall, perhaps, some sort of multi-level shopping center, however he has no wallet with him, no money to spend, and not even a means of officially identifying himself if confronted with a request for identification, or if he himself needs to make certain, for that matter, and, actually, the man is not even wearing a shirt or shoes, a definite indication that he isn’t in the present building in the role of customer, the classic adage of “no shirt, no shoes, no service” at least still firmly implanted in his mind, and he squirms inwardly, trying to establish and unravel the sequence preceding his boarding the elevator, where it started, perhaps a motel? he wonders, considering circumstances which might place him in temporary lodgings, travel or business, for some reason, but what might his business be? some sort of salesman, touring performer, or maybe even an executive of some kind who must meet, regularly, others in corresponding capacities representing other businesses to discuss, conclude and solidify certain arrangements that require his physical presence, because his physical presence is, after all, the only thing he seems able to verify, although this is also problematic, as this particular elevator is not of the variety walled and/or ceilinged with mirrors or other reflective surfaces to provide a greater sense of space, no, this particular elevator consists entirely of matte, dull-colored panels, not even carpeted should he wish to relax or even sleep in the meantime while forced to occupy whatever he is in between, but perhaps it is an affair? he supposes, hopefully, a liaison, some rendezvous with a hired prostitute, or even a partner willing to couple gratis? and this thought gives the man something to, at least, consider with a degree of pleasure, that, perhaps, back in a room, there is a half-naked woman, or girl, waiting idly for him to fetch a snack from the first floor vending machine or, perhaps, some ice to refresh the drinks they might be in the process of imbibing, ice he might upon his return to her take cubes of between thumb and forefinger and slide along the surface of her warm body, tracing clear trails of cold, fresh liquid around her nipples, down her belly, over her thighs, turning her over to run the ice down her back along the spine, over her buttocks, instructing her to raise her bottom half with her knees, parting her buttocks so he can tease there, maybe even inserting melted chips of the ice, breathing on them as the cold water leaks and, actually, some ice would be quite welcome right now in this elevator, as it has grown uncomfortably hot, and the man removes his pants, his only garment still on, to fan a leg of the pants at his plump, perspiring face, like the giddy waving of an awkwardly-shaped flag, and why nobody has made any apparent effort to rescue him at this point is perplexing, almost maddening, because the elevator should have resumed its descent, or ascent, by now, or the doors or some panel should have opened, allowing him to finally escape this space that was never meant to be occupied for a length of time exceeding what it takes to travel from one floor to another, and this causes the man to wonder, how many floors are in this building? and imagine that maybe he is still moving after all, only this building is so tall, perhaps with many sub-floors as well, and this elevator so smooth and slow that it has merely taken a great deal of time to carry him from one floor to another, so long that he has lost track of said time and gotten himself into this confused and agitated state, but upon looking to count the buttons and determine the number of floors the man finds there aren’t any, no buttons of any kind, not even a grill or speaker through which a bell might chime or tinny music might play, nor even a fire alarm or series of unlit numbers across the top of the door, not that what he is, at the moment, considering the door resembles a door so much as another wall, identical to the others, identical to the ceiling and floor, to tell the truth, and the man wonders if he actually tried to stand on one of these other walls if any of them might serve as floor as effectively as the wall he is presently standing on has so far, and as these thoughts overcome him he yearns terribly for some kind of distraction, however slight, something to read or look at, but in his pants he has no such materials to occupy his imagination, no paperback book, rolled up magazine, or even pam- phlet he might have picked up somewhere, no, nothing to read, nothing in his pants besides a small, worn nub of a pencil, just that and the bare walls available to him, and the man, in lieu of having something to read, because he does remember that he did like to read, any old thing that might happen his way, generally in order to avoid having to interact with anyone else, he imagines he remembers, routinely interacting with others being something that always struck him as more of a painful chore than any sort of pleasure, and there was one thing he remembers reading distinctly, a book, a doctor’s account, and it being the account of a doctor lent the whole thing an air of credibility, he thought, and there are worse things than being credible, and this doctor’s account was particularly interesting because the doctor’s account was of an episode of severe disassociation, a series of such episodes, in which a very respectable man, actually a judge of some kind, who had lived long before in another place, but was now dead, had once made the mistake of imagining what it might be like to experience, in a passive fashion, sex as a woman, and following this imagining the man realized that this odd thought seemed to have come from somewhere, someone, outside of himself, must have, and in fact came from a doctor, a different doctor, a doctor other than the one who wrote the book, a doctor this man had seen for some other reason, certainly not for this thought to be installed, which was something this doctor he saw did by utilizing a secret language unknown to most, if not all, living men of this man’s time, transmitted to the man by means of millions of soul-people, beaming rays of information and instruction into him by the grace of God, God being an even more credible source than any doctor, and what God had in mind was to, in fact, transform the man into a woman, miraculously, and that this would, of course, involve modifying, in this miserable physical realm “mutilating,” although in this case merely “retracting,” when the man was not focusing his willpower against this divine “retracting,” certain fleshy features which seemed to prevent the man from achieving this divinely desired feminine status, but this transformation was, and is, utterly essential, to God, or at least sometimes one of the gods, for there was now more than one, just as there was more than one doctor, and all doctors, everyone and everything, these millions of souls and millions more dependent upon this transformation taking place, and for this man this messy attack of knowledge and series of menacing miracles were all glorious and overwhelming and intricate and horrible and inevitable and it was really just getting good when there was someone interrupting this read, a definitively feminine presence, and the man’s concentration broken from this book took aspects of this looming presence in and the man recalls there were lips and there were teeth and there was the word “you,” which was repeated in many ways, many times, and that word, like many other words, perhaps any of them, all, when repeated, can easily lose meaning, becoming at best a sort of music, or maybe just a sound, at worst, noise, this certain word a sort of stuck, engine-ish, revving noise, like a car that will not start for some damn reason or another, but whatever the reason is the remedy will, no doubt, not be inexpensive, and the noise of the word of the errant motor, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you and it really could go on forever, as long as you say it, as long as you twist with your fingers the key and press with your foot the pedal, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you and likewise going nowhere, in this erstwhile elevator, the man makes this sound, just as he writes it out, now kneeling and writing on the floor that was, he is reasonably certain, the ceiling not long before, and considers looking up at what is now the ceiling to see if his removed garments are still strewn there, or stuck, as they would be in this arrangement, but that strikes him as, possibly, too much, that they might indeed be there, stuck to the ceiling like that, or perhaps no longer be pants and the rest of what he thought he was shortly before wearing at all, but a gauzy discarded dress, perhaps slightly torn, various un- derthings, off-white panties, charcoal stockings, shadow-black garter belt, a sort of faded-taupe bra, shining red shoes spiked into this new ceiling, no, he’d just as soon not see, not be distracted, not taken away from his work, for this is now work, an occupation, a calling, a fully-involved way of being, doing what he is doing now and forever with all that is left in him, spent through his fingers like gurgled fuel, using what might not actually be a nub of pencil, not writing in lead, or whatever it is they put in pencils these days, no, not a pencil, not lead, whatever this clumsy shred of spongy wet thing he has to write with might be, reading it all out loud as he writes on what space is left available on this dark surface, each word, for whoever might be listening, for whoever might also be reading, hearing and seeing the noise, the sound, the word, this word, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you—