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The Fith Floor
The light hums a single, monotonous note, the color of sickness. It bleeds down the jade-green tiles, pooling on the checkered floor where I sit. Or, where my body sits. I am… adjacent to it. A silent observer to my own stillness.
The elevator doors slide open with a soft, synthetic sigh. They reveal nothing but the same tiled corridor, bathed in the same green gloom. A moment of absolute silence, then they slide shut again. The lock clicks like a final judgment. This has been the rhythm of my eternity: the hum, the sigh, the click.
And the number. Above the door, a single, defiant digit glows in angry red: 5.
It is not just a number. It is a library of my failures, a museum of my compromises. The doors sigh open again, but this time, it is not the green corridor I see.
I see Arman’s face, years younger, hope still lighting his eyes. We are in a cramped office, blueprints spread over a cheap table. “Our dream, Elias,” he’d said, his hand outstretched. I see my own hand, younger and stronger, shaking his. Then the image dissolves, replaced by another: a boardroom, polished mahogany and chilled water. I am signing a paper, the same one that legally severs Arman from the company we built together. He had become inconvenient, a drag on my ambition. When the doors slide shut, I can almost taste the bitter coffee from that boardroom.
The hum. The sigh. The click. The doors open.
My mother's face, etched with worry. She is on a phone screen, her voice a distant crackle. "You never call, Elias. Is everything alright?" I see myself wave a dismissive hand, my eyes glued to a stock market ticker. "I'm busy, Ma. I'll call you back." I never did. She passed away two weeks later, while I was closing a deal in another country. The deal made me a millionaire. The memory, however, leaves me bankrupt.
The hum. The sigh. The click. The doors open.
A young man in a worn-out suit, clutching a portfolio. He had talent, a fierce, raw creativity that reminded me of my younger self. He worked for me. A rival company framed him for a data leak, and I knew he was innocent. But protecting him would have meant a costly legal battle, a dip in the quarterly profits. So I stayed silent. I watched his career crumble. In the reflection of the elevator’s steel door, I see his eyes, stripped of their fire, replaced by a hollow emptiness I now understand intimately.
The hum. The sigh. The click. The doors open.
A child, no older than ten, her face smudged with dirt. Her hand is outstretched, not for money, but for the bag of groceries I am carrying. "My brother is sick," she whispers, her voice barely audible. I see myself pull my hand back, clutching the bag tighter, a sudden, irrational fear of her poverty tainting me. I walked away, the whisper following me for a few steps before fading into the city's noise. I ate well that night. I cannot remember what I had, but I can feel the gnawing hunger of that child in the pit of my own soul.
The hum. The sigh. The click. The doors open for the final time in the sequence.
This memory is fresh, the blood still wet. It is Arman again, no longer young, the hope in his eyes replaced by a quiet, settled sadness. He found me. He didn't want revenge, only answers. "Why, Elias? We were brothers."
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His question hangs in the air of my memory. It wasn’t a shout; it was a lament. I had no answer. Only pride. A heated argument, a shove. It was clumsy, not malicious. But my back was to the open elevator shaft—this very elevator, waiting. My own surprise was the last thing I felt. A flash of green tile, the metallic taste of fear, then a final, crunching impact.
The memory fades. The door slides shut.
I am back in the green stillness. The body below me is a testament to a life of hollow victories. The blood on the wall behind it, a final, messy signature.
The doors slide open again. The green corridor. Nothing has changed. It took me a long time to understand. This elevator isn't stuck. It's not broken. It has reached its destination. It's not going up or down.
This is the fifth floor. My floor. A place built not of steel and tile, but of memory and regret. A quiet, green room where I am forced to perpetually witness the man I chose to be, one unforgivable moment at a time. The hum, the sigh, the click.
It is the only story I have left to tell.
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