The Eleventh Second

She knows that the elevator is broken. She knows she wants no accident to happen. She knows that she should take the stairs since five floors are not too much to walk, considering her safety.

But she doesn’t stop herself from pressing the up button, glowing bright orange.

The old machine cranks down from the seventh floor and opens its doors for her. There is nobody else, and she secretly relishes this opportunity.

Her nerves are on fire and tingling with horrid excitement like she’s a teenager again, doing all the things her parents never would accommodate. Only this time, there is no parent to catch her misbehaving; in fact, she tells herself that it’s not misbehaving at all; she is simply and straightforwardly taking a risk for her pleasure.

And so, as the blood rushes up to her head and her heartbeat drums like a storm, somewhere between excitement and pain, she steps into the elevator as it dings open.

The lights are yellow and somewhat dimmed by the dust that had accumulated on the glass covers, and so were the mirrors. The floor was once mosaiced, but at this point it was nothing but dust.

She steps into the elevator as it wobbles forebodingly, but she does not hesitate. She presses the orange ‘5’ button.

As the doors ding shut, she holds her breath with an expectation that rises to the very top of her head and stays there, thrumming, seeming to lift her spirit. She stares at the LED panel.

2 – 3 – 4 –

And it stops right there. Exactly where it always does: suspended between the fourth and fifth floors, the LED panel frozen on “4” like a punctuation mark. No lurch, no grind of gears—just stillness, as if the world itself has hit pause. She smiles, a small, private thing. Eleven seconds. It’s never more, never less.

She’s timed it, over and over. Eleven seconds of weightlessness; of limbo. Sometimes she thinks it’s a wiring flaw, some ancient sensor sticking in the elevator’s creaky mechanism. Other times—when the air hums, when the lights flicker just so—she wonders if it’s something else. A hiccup in the fabric of things, a moment where the rules loosen. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s reliable. In a life that slips and shifts, this is hers: eleven seconds, hers alone.

Her breath slows. She starts the count, dreading the end before the start begins. One. The hum of the elevator is nonexistent. It’s utterly quiet. Two. Her fingers brush the cold metal of the rail, a prolonged habit. Three. Four. Five… Her eyes stay locked on the panel, as if willing the numbers to hold. Six. Seven. Eight. The thrill of it unfurls in her chest—this secret, this pause that no one else notices, that no one else waits for. Nine. Ten. Her disappointment starts kicking in as the adrenaline dies down.

She waits for the eleven second.

But the eleventh second doesn’t come.

Instead, there’s a sound: a shriek of metal, high and sharp, like a scream. The elevator lurches, not upward, but down—a stomach-churning drop that yanks her off her feet. Her arms flail, grabbing for the rail, but it’s too late. The lights explode in a shower of sparks.

She almost cries in rage.

Where is the eleventh second?