The Elevator Pitch

A short story

Photo by Edwin Chen on Unsplash

Jack Fitzgerald entered elevator number three on the one-hundred-fourteenth floor of his Sixty Second Street and Madison Avenue apartment building—named the Galileo Tower. He had hoped for elevator number one, two, four, five, or six—anything but three—but chance didn’t favor him this morning.

He was thirty-six, but with soft, blonde hair, light blue eyes, and a smooth, round face, he appeared ten years younger.

Working as a personal trainer no doubt sustained his youthful appearance. He sometimes wondered if he’d age slowly, or when he turned sixty, suddenly transform into a withered prune.

He liked elevators, but he didn’t like elevator number three, in which he now descended. It rattled. It sometimes jerked, as if something was wrong with the cable. Sometimes, the elevator rasped as if metal was grinding against metal.

In the winter, elevator three was the chilliest of the building’s six elevators, and in the summer, it could be cool or hot; you never knew before you stepped inside.

Each annual inspection confirmed that the lift was safe, but Jack wondered how thorough those inspections were.

Today, he joined a woman already inside, somebody he’d never seen before, and guessed she was a new tenant on one of the eight floors above his. She had blonde hair like his and sported tattered jeans, leather ankle boots with pointed tips, a thick checkered flannel shirt, and a gold-and-orange knotted cord necklace. Her ears were unpierced. He thought she was pretty.

After the doors shut, he watched her place her hand on his shoulder, and then, it appeared as if her fingers passed through his flesh and blood vessels into his bone. His shoulder burned, and his arm felt like it was ablaze, and in a fraction of a second, his chest became a furnace. Nausea filled him, and sweat coated his arms and neck.

He crumpled to the hard floor. After some moments, he opened his eyes and peered up.

The woman hovered next to the elevator buttons. They were on the one hundred first floor.

Jack tasted blood in his mouth.

His heart felt like somebody had hit it with a rock. A tsunami of pain radiated from his chest outward.

What’s happening?

As if the woman could read his mind, she replied, “You died. Or you were supposed to. Hmm. First time that’s happened.” Her accent was midwestern. She pouted.

Jack slowly rose from the floor.

“I’ll have to try again.”

“Try what again?”

“Kill you, of course. I’m Death, and I’m here for you, Jack Fitzgerald.”

Jack slinked as far away from the woman as the small elevator would allow. He couldn’t reconcile her beauty with her mission. But he couldn’t deny that a heart attack nearly took his life.

The woman advanced toward Jack, closing the space between them. He might’ve been able to shuffle to the left and right for a few seconds, but he wouldn’t be able to evade her any longer than that, and if touching was part of Death’s process, then his remaining time was short.

What will it be next? A second, more powerful heart attack? A stroke?

“Neither. There are a thousand ways a human being can die, and I like to be creative.”

“It’s not my time—I’m only thirty-six. I’m a good man. A father, a loving husband.”

Death raised an eyebrow. “I see.” She glanced at the display. “We’re on the ninety-fifth floor. That gives you a little under a minute to continue your elevator pitch about why you should live. That’s what you’re doing, trying to sell Death, isn’t it? One caveat. If you succeed in convincing me, that’s wonderful for you, and you will continue to exist for another fifty years. But if your elevator pitch falls flat, your death will be more painful than anything you’ve ever experienced or imagined, like being burned alive or eaten from the inside out by fire ants.”

Jack’s eyes went wide. His face turned pale. He took a long breath and launched his pitch, “My name is Jack Fitzgerald, and I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May third. My wife’s name is Christine, and my five-month-old son is Devon. I want to be alive to see him take his first step…”

As the elevator approached the twenty-fourth floor, Jack said, “I’m done. I hope my pitch was good enough to save my life.” He clasped his hands tightly together and shivered.

Death pursed her lips, shook her head to flick her hair off her eyes, and then shook her head again to offer her response. “No, it wasn’t.”

Jack’s knees wobbled. He clutched the elevator’s grab bar.

I should never have trusted her, never have trusted Death. What kind of idiot would? Me, I’m that idiot.

He dug a fingernail into his hand. “You were always going to take my life. The elevator pitch was just a way of toying with me, wasn’t it? You wanted to have a little fun before you killed me.”

“I don’t kill anyone, Jack. I’m Death. I collect their lives because all lives are eventually mine.” She rubbed her hands together and took a step toward him. “Now, as I promised, your death will be painful. Unless—”

“Another game?”

“Unless you take your own life. If you do that, your last seconds will be relatively painless.” She removed a pearl-handled, fixed-blade dagger from the small of her back and extended it to Jack.

“Don’t even think about it. I am eternal. Stabbing me won’t do anything.”

“Can I test that proposition?”

“Only if you want agony.”

Jack sighed. “I’ll cut my wrists. I hear that’s not so painful.”

“You’re correct, but death from wrist cutting takes too long, and you’ll still be alive when we reach the first floor.” She narrowed her eyes and slid her finger across her neck, “Do it hard and do it fast.” She opened her mouth wide, and her face turned skeletal, rotten, broken, with moldy teeth on full display. She suddenly smelled of deep, rank earth, the kind on which a coffin would rest. A second later, her beauty returned.

Jack glanced at the floor indicator. Seventh floor.

Lucky seven.

He raised the blade to his neck, sliced through the skin and muscle to the carotid artery. And then he died.

The elevator chime rang when it reached the first floor. Jack stood.

How can I stand if I’m dead?

“Thank you, Jack,” the woman said. She leaned forward and kissed Jack’s cheek, but he felt nothing.

“For what? And what happened? Why am I not dead?”

“You are dead, Jack, just not the way you thought you would be. You killed yourself, don’t you remember?”

Jack frowned and touched his ear, which tumbled to the elevator floor with a muffled splat.

Why doesn’t it hurt? Jack thought.

“Pick it up and put it back.” She pointed to the ear that flopped around the ground like a fish on land searching for the ocean. “There’s a lot you’ll need to learn about your new self, but you have forever to learn that. I wish I could stay and explain it all to you, tell you everything that’s happened over the past one-hundred-forty-one years, but I’ve been here too long to spend even another minute in this box. Suffice it to say, you killing yourself freed me. I’m not Death. I’m a ghost, or rather was one. You see, I died in the elevator in the building that once occupied this space in eighteen-eighty-five during a horrible fire—an excruciating death—and I’ve haunted it ever since. They tore the building down three times, and each time, I’ve remained. Now you are the spirit. Bye, Jack.”

She pressed the door open button and exited the elevator into the sun-lit apartment lobby.

The elevator door closed. Jack pressed the open button, but nothing happened.

He grabbed onto the bar that ran along the elevator’s interior and jolted it with all his might, vibrating the elevator ever so slightly. He looked at the mirrored button frame, half expecting to see his ghostly reflection, but he saw nothing.

He knew how to get out, but what he didn’t yet know was with whom.

Elevator number three dinged. Somebody wanted a ride.

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