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Description
There was no way around the crowd, so Ryan, Alfred, and Mariam started pushing their way through. Alfred was the boldest, deftly moving people aside like a bulldozer in a rock quarry. Mariam wound around people, snaking through the open spots, trying to be courteous. Ryan just followed Mariam, afraid of getting lost in the tangle of bodies. The people did not take kindly to being pushed around; upon any impact they would recoil and yell indignantly at you, sometimes trying to hit you. It was like navigating jungle brush. In the distance, even above the clamor, the elevator kept chiming and opening. As the three crept closer, the chiming increased in volume. Near the front, it was deafening, but nobody seemed to notice.
There were some difficulties getting through the crowd. A couple of times, Mariam got ahead of Ryan, who was then forced to rush forward through the crowd. Other times, Alfred would push people and cause a wave effect, which would then ripple through the sea of people and hit Mariam and Ryan. The persons in white were still gliding through the crowd, in spite of the chaos. Once, Ryan tripped and brought some people down with him, including Alfred. Ryan felt crushed under the downpour of people, but he felt neither shortness nor constraint of breath. He felt a small point of pressure on his hand. He glimpsed out of the bottom of the pile, and saw that a woman in white had stepped on him. Yet when he eventually crawled out, he was unarmed. He shivered slightly, feeling numb.
Throughout their struggle, the crowd had been thinning out, slowly filing into the elevator. When people began collapsing, the remnant of the crowd moved to the sides, allowing Ryan, Mariam, and Alfred a brief sliver of time to get to the front. They marched forward, the elevator doors closing in front of them. The crowd rushed back to the center, trying to reach the elevator. The doors closed, the crowd converged, but the all three companions narrowly avoided being caught in the rush. They were now leaning on the wall.
Ryan stood under a florescent light, steadily pushing the elevator button. It glowed palely against the dull gray brass cover. Sometimes he missed the button and struck the metal, but he felt no pain and kept pushing the button. He was unfocused; his eyes loosely followed his hand and traveled across his arm, and then back to the button. He was a nail-biter, as evidenced by his mangled nails. His arms were speckled with a couple of freckles and covered with thin black hairs. His shirt was gray red, and he was wearing a pair of jeans worn through at the feet. The bottom stitching had come undone from pulling the jeans under with every step, and now there was a hole. He could fit his heel through the hole and wear the bottom like a shoe. His shoes were old tennis shoes with frayed shoelaces. His eyes kept drifting around, and his head followed. He looked over to Alfred and Mariam, who were watching him press the button. He stopped suddenly, self aware, before both Alfred and Mariam turned to look at the crowd. The jumble of souls, the gliding persons, the symphony of screams, had not changed since the three had emerged. They were still close to the crowd, but it was not trying to pull them back in. Indeed, the crowd was shifting as if it was trying to separate. The elevator bell rang, causing the crowd to swell forward furiously. Alfred, Mariam, and Ryan rushed to the doors before the crowd did.
The doors opened slowly, blowing a breath of cold air over the crowd. Ryan peered in. The interior was composed of a flowery carpet design extending over a part of the wall. The rest of the wall and ceiling were mirrors, sparkling because of a lone light at the top. The elevator was small. Ryan felt himself pushed forward by the crowd, and was soon pushed against the wall. He turned around to see people flooding in behind him. He fell back against the wall, vainly trying to clutch onto it.
The elevator was not big enough to support everyone in the lobby. He waited for the lines to snap, the unit to start shaking, a warning buzzer, and then the plummet into the unknown. Ryan closed his eyes, imagining the g-forces pulling him.
He felt a tug on his arm. The descent, it was starting! They would crash down, maybe to a basement, maybe into the void to be lost forever. He opened his eyes. He saw Alfred’s stern face and felt him pulling his arm. Someone’s hair was close enough to eat. Ryan looked around to see that hundreds, maybe thousands, of people were standing in the elevator. They were still speaking simultaneously, but they were augmented by the lobby crowd. Ryan complied with Alfred’s pull and wiggled his way through the crowd. On the way he bumped someone uncomfortably, who proceeded to whip Ryan in the temple. There was no pain, only a quick feeling of pressure on his side. He heard the elevator chime again, and he saw the doors close again. The people in the lobby were screaming, enraged that they had not made it. When the doors closed, they were gone, and the crowd remaining was much quieter.
Ryan was now standing in the middle of the elevator. He looked to the sides, and saw the people reflected ad infinitum by the mirrors. It was a belittling feeling. Ryan sighed and looked forward. His mind coursed with the thoughts that every lost individual has experienced. He asked himself where he was, why he was here, what this place is, and where he was going. Most of all, he was thinking about himself, and the numb feeling slowly encroaching on him. He had been thrown against the wall, stepped on, crushed, and attacked, yet he bore no bruises, cuts, or scars. He felt no body heat, even among the huge throng of people. The elevator door rang, the doors opened, and people from all over the elevator started filing out. The doors closed, and Ryan felt the elevator move slowly.
He glanced around the crowd some more. He caught their glances and turned his head violently away, self-aware. He caught Mariam’s glance to the right, who seemed to be watching him the whole time. She was smiling, showing her teeth a little. Ryan smiled back, and glanced to the mirror to the left. Over the crowd, he saw her smile reflected a million times. He looked back at her, and then to Alfred. His brows were furrowed and his mouth was curled in a frown, but his eyes conveyed a feeling of sympathy. Ryan kept smiling as he faced forward, filled with a sense of comfort. The elevator bell rang again, and more people began filing out. Ryan tried to look outside the elevator but he could not see well. The doors closed, and the chamber started moving seamlessly.
The crowd was thinning out and spreading apart, augmenting Ryan’s feeling of comfort. He looked around the elevator some more, and saw the button panel. Every button except for “L”, “1” and “2” were lit up. He faced forward, sometimes glancing away to look in the mirrors. The bell rang, more people left, the doors closed, the ascension continued.
Ryan looked back to Mariam and Alfred, who were still watching him. Alfred was saying something, but Ryan could not hear him. The crowd in the interior was still very noisy. He tried mouthing to Alfred that he could not hear, but Alfred did not understand. The bell rang, more people left, the doors closed, the ascension continued.
The crowd kept spacing out and quieting down, but Ryan did not feel any better about it. He was beginning to feel disquieted by the crowd, of the elevator, of the mystery surrounding the elevator’s journey. He looked at Alfred and Mariam, the only two people in Purg & Tory who he remotely trusted, but their eyes, their smiles, offered him no more comfort. The bell rang, more people left, the doors closed, the ascension continued.
The dismay and perplexity clung to Ryan again like ivy, threatening to choke out every other feeling in his body. His head whipped around the elevator, alarming the people near him. Alfred was watching him keenly while Mariam was weighing whether or not to stop Ryan’s actions. The bell rang, more people left, the doors closed, the ascension continued.
It was Ryan’s floor next. He was shivering, looking nervously at the doors, then to the mirrors, then to Alfred and Mariam, and then back to the doors. It was a tidy cycle, all in the same well-tuned, monotonous motions. Questions filled his head, all screeching and circling around like aggravated seagulls. He wanted to answer these questions, but there were no answers in sight. He could gleam nothing from the pale gray elevator, full of pale gray people, perhaps journeying to some pale gray future. His eyes bugged and he began to kneel forward with his hands on the side of his head. He asked himself, “Why wasn’t the bell ringing? Why weren’t people leaving? Where is this elevator taking me?” He was trying to find meaning to what the woman in white told him, about finding an empty place. He groped around his memories of Purg & Tory, trying to find what that meant, if there was any sort of clue or answer to that statement. He thought of nothing. He imagined that Alfred and Mariam were watching him, concerned, but he did not feel their arms trying to support him, and they did not answer his questions. Therefore, in this stage of hysteria, they were of no use to him. A scream was gathering itself from the depths of his being, crawling up and rattling his stomach. He felt it climb his throat, enveloping all the noise until it was massive and looming like a storm front. It peeked up into his mouth and then slowly filled it like a bed of fog. Ryan could feel it forcing his mouth open, readying itself to be unleashed. He opened his mouth, resigning himself to the anger, resentment, fear, and anxiety forcing its way out. He braced himself, imagining that his yell would be powerful and furious enough to cause shockwaves. It was at its onset, preparing itself, and in that moment.
The bell rung and the doors opened. Alfred picked up Ryan and faced him towards the doors. The scream dissipated and soaked back into his body, back into his soul. Ryan felt that his insides were raw and torn up. He walked out slowly, being guided by Alfred with Mariam coming behind him. Now the questions would be answered. Finally, there would be some purpose to this place. He looked out the doors invigorated and curious and within seconds, his questions were answered.
The doors opened to a sea of cubicles stretching for seemingly miles. Ryan felt his invigoration mashed apart by the vaporous apparitions of his scream, and left him stupefied.
All three companions stepped out of the elevator and moved off to the side, away from the main crowd. Behind them, the elevator doors closed, and it was gone. Alfred tried getting Ryan’s attention again, but he was lost in his confusion, in the million seagulls screaming and fluttering around in his head. After a couple of minutes, after most of the rest of the crowd had entered the maze of boxes, Alfred and Mariam pushed Ryan forward and entered as well. Slowly losing his befuddlement, Ryan looked around into some of the cubicles as they passed by. Each of them was sparsely furnished, with one desk that housed a computer, a keyboard, a mouse, and a printer. There was an office chair and one tall filing cabinet behind the desk. Next to the desk away from the entrance, an empty place looked like it should have been filled, as well as a clock on the wall. Most of the people were new like Ryan, and just as confused. Ryan saw this same scene repeatedly as Alfred and Mariam walked with him. They walked for what seemed like ages before they found an empty spot. Ryan stepped in cautiously, afraid that it was all going to evaporate before his eyes. Alfred made an abrupt cough, startling Ryan and causing him to fall back into his chair.
Alfred faced him and asked, “Your name is Ryan Creel, correct?”
Ryan sat, thinking for a second, before saying, “Yes.” He looked down for a second before making eye contact and asking, “Well what are your names then?”
Alfred made no motions, but Mariam bypassed him to answer, extending her hand cordially. “My name’s Mariam Waller.” Ryan took the hand and shook it before looking at Alfred.
The topaz eyes bristled slightly before they brightened up and Alfred smiled. He extended his hand. “I am Alfred Himmelreich. I am glad to meet you” He quickly moved his hand back to his side when Ryan was done shaking it.
With introductions in order, Alfred and Mariam stepped out and began walking away. Suddenly Alfred stopped and looked back into Ryan’s cubicle. “At five o’clock,” he said, “come up to the roof. We will be waiting there, if you are interested.” He started walking away before turning back again. “You should be able to find the elevator.” In a second, they were out of Ryan’s sight.
Curious, Ryan stood up and looked out into the hallway trying to find them and ask more questions, but they had vanished into the sea of cubicles. Ryan sat down and started swiveling around in his chair. He looked to his clock on the wall. The time was 3:43 p.m.

Description
There was no way around the crowd, so Ryan, Alfred, and Mariam started pushing their way through. Alfred was the boldest, deftly moving people aside like a bulldozer in a rock quarry. Mariam wound around people, snaking through the open spots, trying to be courteous. Ryan just followed Mariam, afraid of getting lost in the tangle of bodies. The people did not take kindly to being pushed around; upon any impact they would recoil and yell indignantly at you, sometimes trying to hit you. It was like navigating jungle brush. In the distance, even above the clamor, the elevator kept chiming and opening. As the three crept closer, the chiming increased in volume. Near the front, it was deafening, but nobody seemed to notice.
There were some difficulties getting through the crowd. A couple of times, Mariam got ahead of Ryan, who was then forced to rush forward through the crowd. Other times, Alfred would push people and cause a wave effect, which would then ripple through the sea of people and hit Mariam and Ryan. The persons in white were still gliding through the crowd, in spite of the chaos. Once, Ryan tripped and brought some people down with him, including Alfred. Ryan felt crushed under the downpour of people, but he felt neither shortness nor constraint of breath. He felt a small point of pressure on his hand. He glimpsed out of the bottom of the pile, and saw that a woman in white had stepped on him. Yet when he eventually crawled out, he was unarmed. He shivered slightly, feeling numb.
Throughout their struggle, the crowd had been thinning out, slowly filing into the elevator. When people began collapsing, the remnant of the crowd moved to the sides, allowing Ryan, Mariam, and Alfred a brief sliver of time to get to the front. They marched forward, the elevator doors closing in front of them. The crowd rushed back to the center, trying to reach the elevator. The doors closed, the crowd converged, but the all three companions narrowly avoided being caught in the rush. They were now leaning on the wall.
Ryan stood under a florescent light, steadily pushing the elevator button. It glowed palely against the dull gray brass cover. Sometimes he missed the button and struck the metal, but he felt no pain and kept pushing the button. He was unfocused; his eyes loosely followed his hand and traveled across his arm, and then back to the button. He was a nail-biter, as evidenced by his mangled nails. His arms were speckled with a couple of freckles and covered with thin black hairs. His shirt was gray red, and he was wearing a pair of jeans worn through at the feet. The bottom stitching had come undone from pulling the jeans under with every step, and now there was a hole. He could fit his heel through the hole and wear the bottom like a shoe. His shoes were old tennis shoes with frayed shoelaces. His eyes kept drifting around, and his head followed. He looked over to Alfred and Mariam, who were watching him press the button. He stopped suddenly, self aware, before both Alfred and Mariam turned to look at the crowd. The jumble of souls, the gliding persons, the symphony of screams, had not changed since the three had emerged. They were still close to the crowd, but it was not trying to pull them back in. Indeed, the crowd was shifting as if it was trying to separate. The elevator bell rang, causing the crowd to swell forward furiously. Alfred, Mariam, and Ryan rushed to the doors before the crowd did.
The doors opened slowly, blowing a breath of cold air over the crowd. Ryan peered in. The interior was composed of a flowery carpet design extending over a part of the wall. The rest of the wall and ceiling were mirrors, sparkling because of a lone light at the top. The elevator was small. Ryan felt himself pushed forward by the crowd, and was soon pushed against the wall. He turned around to see people flooding in behind him. He fell back against the wall, vainly trying to clutch onto it.
The elevator was not big enough to support everyone in the lobby. He waited for the lines to snap, the unit to start shaking, a warning buzzer, and then the plummet into the unknown. Ryan closed his eyes, imagining the g-forces pulling him.
He felt a tug on his arm. The descent, it was starting! They would crash down, maybe to a basement, maybe into the void to be lost forever. He opened his eyes. He saw Alfred’s stern face and felt him pulling his arm. Someone’s hair was close enough to eat. Ryan looked around to see that hundreds, maybe thousands, of people were standing in the elevator. They were still speaking simultaneously, but they were augmented by the lobby crowd. Ryan complied with Alfred’s pull and wiggled his way through the crowd. On the way he bumped someone uncomfortably, who proceeded to whip Ryan in the temple. There was no pain, only a quick feeling of pressure on his side. He heard the elevator chime again, and he saw the doors close again. The people in the lobby were screaming, enraged that they had not made it. When the doors closed, they were gone, and the crowd remaining was much quieter.
Ryan was now standing in the middle of the elevator. He looked to the sides, and saw the people reflected ad infinitum by the mirrors. It was a belittling feeling. Ryan sighed and looked forward. His mind coursed with the thoughts that every lost individual has experienced. He asked himself where he was, why he was here, what this place is, and where he was going. Most of all, he was thinking about himself, and the numb feeling slowly encroaching on him. He had been thrown against the wall, stepped on, crushed, and attacked, yet he bore no bruises, cuts, or scars. He felt no body heat, even among the huge throng of people. The elevator door rang, the doors opened, and people from all over the elevator started filing out. The doors closed, and Ryan felt the elevator move slowly.
He glanced around the crowd some more. He caught their glances and turned his head violently away, self-aware. He caught Mariam’s glance to the right, who seemed to be watching him the whole time. She was smiling, showing her teeth a little. Ryan smiled back, and glanced to the mirror to the left. Over the crowd, he saw her smile reflected a million times. He looked back at her, and then to Alfred. His brows were furrowed and his mouth was curled in a frown, but his eyes conveyed a feeling of sympathy. Ryan kept smiling as he faced forward, filled with a sense of comfort. The elevator bell rang again, and more people began filing out. Ryan tried to look outside the elevator but he could not see well. The doors closed, and the chamber started moving seamlessly.
The crowd was thinning out and spreading apart, augmenting Ryan’s feeling of comfort. He looked around the elevator some more, and saw the button panel. Every button except for “L”, “1” and “2” were lit up. He faced forward, sometimes glancing away to look in the mirrors. The bell rang, more people left, the doors closed, the ascension continued.
Ryan looked back to Mariam and Alfred, who were still watching him. Alfred was saying something, but Ryan could not hear him. The crowd in the interior was still very noisy. He tried mouthing to Alfred that he could not hear, but Alfred did not understand. The bell rang, more people left, the doors closed, the ascension continued.
The crowd kept spacing out and quieting down, but Ryan did not feel any better about it. He was beginning to feel disquieted by the crowd, of the elevator, of the mystery surrounding the elevator’s journey. He looked at Alfred and Mariam, the only two people in Purg & Tory who he remotely trusted, but their eyes, their smiles, offered him no more comfort. The bell rang, more people left, the doors closed, the ascension continued.
The dismay and perplexity clung to Ryan again like ivy, threatening to choke out every other feeling in his body. His head whipped around the elevator, alarming the people near him. Alfred was watching him keenly while Mariam was weighing whether or not to stop Ryan’s actions. The bell rang, more people left, the doors closed, the ascension continued.
It was Ryan’s floor next. He was shivering, looking nervously at the doors, then to the mirrors, then to Alfred and Mariam, and then back to the doors. It was a tidy cycle, all in the same well-tuned, monotonous motions. Questions filled his head, all screeching and circling around like aggravated seagulls. He wanted to answer these questions, but there were no answers in sight. He could gleam nothing from the pale gray elevator, full of pale gray people, perhaps journeying to some pale gray future. His eyes bugged and he began to kneel forward with his hands on the side of his head. He asked himself, “Why wasn’t the bell ringing? Why weren’t people leaving? Where is this elevator taking me?” He was trying to find meaning to what the woman in white told him, about finding an empty place. He groped around his memories of Purg & Tory, trying to find what that meant, if there was any sort of clue or answer to that statement. He thought of nothing. He imagined that Alfred and Mariam were watching him, concerned, but he did not feel their arms trying to support him, and they did not answer his questions. Therefore, in this stage of hysteria, they were of no use to him. A scream was gathering itself from the depths of his being, crawling up and rattling his stomach. He felt it climb his throat, enveloping all the noise until it was massive and looming like a storm front. It peeked up into his mouth and then slowly filled it like a bed of fog. Ryan could feel it forcing his mouth open, readying itself to be unleashed. He opened his mouth, resigning himself to the anger, resentment, fear, and anxiety forcing its way out. He braced himself, imagining that his yell would be powerful and furious enough to cause shockwaves. It was at its onset, preparing itself, and in that moment.
The bell rung and the doors opened. Alfred picked up Ryan and faced him towards the doors. The scream dissipated and soaked back into his body, back into his soul. Ryan felt that his insides were raw and torn up. He walked out slowly, being guided by Alfred with Mariam coming behind him. Now the questions would be answered. Finally, there would be some purpose to this place. He looked out the doors invigorated and curious and within seconds, his questions were answered.
The doors opened to a sea of cubicles stretching for seemingly miles. Ryan felt his invigoration mashed apart by the vaporous apparitions of his scream, and left him stupefied.
All three companions stepped out of the elevator and moved off to the side, away from the main crowd. Behind them, the elevator doors closed, and it was gone. Alfred tried getting Ryan’s attention again, but he was lost in his confusion, in the million seagulls screaming and fluttering around in his head. After a couple of minutes, after most of the rest of the crowd had entered the maze of boxes, Alfred and Mariam pushed Ryan forward and entered as well. Slowly losing his befuddlement, Ryan looked around into some of the cubicles as they passed by. Each of them was sparsely furnished, with one desk that housed a computer, a keyboard, a mouse, and a printer. There was an office chair and one tall filing cabinet behind the desk. Next to the desk away from the entrance, an empty place looked like it should have been filled, as well as a clock on the wall. Most of the people were new like Ryan, and just as confused. Ryan saw this same scene repeatedly as Alfred and Mariam walked with him. They walked for what seemed like ages before they found an empty spot. Ryan stepped in cautiously, afraid that it was all going to evaporate before his eyes. Alfred made an abrupt cough, startling Ryan and causing him to fall back into his chair.
Alfred faced him and asked, “Your name is Ryan Creel, correct?”
Ryan sat, thinking for a second, before saying, “Yes.” He looked down for a second before making eye contact and asking, “Well what are your names then?”
Alfred made no motions, but Mariam bypassed him to answer, extending her hand cordially. “My name’s Mariam Waller.” Ryan took the hand and shook it before looking at Alfred.
The topaz eyes bristled slightly before they brightened up and Alfred smiled. He extended his hand. “I am Alfred Himmelreich. I am glad to meet you” He quickly moved his hand back to his side when Ryan was done shaking it.
With introductions in order, Alfred and Mariam stepped out and began walking away. Suddenly Alfred stopped and looked back into Ryan’s cubicle. “At five o’clock,” he said, “come up to the roof. We will be waiting there, if you are interested.” He started walking away before turning back again. “You should be able to find the elevator.” In a second, they were out of Ryan’s sight.
Curious, Ryan stood up and looked out into the hallway trying to find them and ask more questions, but they had vanished into the sea of cubicles. Ryan sat down and started swiveling around in his chair. He looked to his clock on the wall. The time was 3:43 p.m.