A Scary Story

Alright my teacher said 'Write a Story like Edgar Allen Poe did.". Being kind of unobservant and hopelessly confused, she did not realize that A) half the class did not know who this was and B) The ones that did had not really read much of his work. In a class of eigth graders, this was the best she was going to get. So, most of us just assumed 'scary' or 'creepily ominous'. Although it probably has nothing to do with Poe, here is my contribution.

Kiera Wolfe
A Poe-like Story

The world exploded in a flash of light as Larry the maintenance man walked into the gold plated atrium in the kingdom of the gods. The double swirly doors of the Mount Olympus Hotel made quietly snobby thwacking noises as they spun around, ferrying tourists into the extravagant foyer. Everything was made of glass. The façade of the building let in the moonlight, which pierced the downy carpeting and threw the plushy couches and exquisite desks into harshly defined shadows.
The new guests swept into the hotel, sighing with relief. The clouds above were growling harshly, threatening to thunder on anyone who displeased them. Larry shook out his umbrella and efficiently stowed it under his jumpsuit-covered arm. He polished his name tag and briskly walked up to the front desk. The black haired and carefully manicured man behind the desk stood up slightly as he approached, looking him up and down, evaluating his worth. After a quick examination, he deemed the situation one that required a haughty aloofness. He straightened up quite a bit more and looked down his nose at Larry.

“Can I help you sir.” He drawled lazily, putting emphasis on his displeasure of using the word when referring to the maintenance man.

“Somebody called about some sort of elevator problem?”

“Oh. Yes. You’re here to fix Bessie aren’t you? Heh, good luck with that one. That old contraption shut down a month ago, won’t move an inch in either direction. The oldest elevator we have really. I don’t see why we just don’t replace it, it’s so useless.”

“I’ll be the judge of that, thank you.” Larry peered down at the man’s name tag “Joseph.”

“Oh you will, won’t you?” Joseph replied with a keen smile, showing an unnaturally large amount of teeth. “Now if you excuse me, other repair personnel need to be dealt with. Ones that are actually doing their jobs.” Larry turned, prepared to leave, as a scruffy man wearing a dirty sweatshirt and pants covered in grease shoved him out of the way. He smelled odd, and reeked of something Larry had never smelled before. He glanced at Larry suspiciously, and turned toward Joseph. Ignoring the snub from both parties, he sauntered away thoughtfully. His eyes are two different colors thought Larry, how peculiar.

He paced over to the elevator that Joseph had pointed at and referred to as ‘Bessie’. It was remarkably roomy, as elevators seemed to be these days, and there was a pretty design of wood paneling on the walls. But the lighting was a little off somehow, throwing the whole box into an ominous collection of subtle darkness. He walked inside, undeterred, and opened the maintenance patch in the wall intended for people of his profession. A flashing red light was blinking determinedly next to a plaque that read ‘WEIGHT LIMIT EXCEEDED’. Larry shook his head in confusion. There was no way that he would set off the scale by himself; he was a rather thin man. It would take at least seven people to weigh down the lift past its maximum capacity. He turned to report his findings to Joseph, not looking forward to another interaction with the oily man, but the hair-gelled monster was already standing outside the elevator, tapping his foot impatiently. “So, can you fix it or not, old man?”

“Well it seems that it’s nothing more than a weight problem, she isn’t moving because the machinery has been halted by the alarm.”

“Oh really.” Sneered Joseph skeptically. “And where is all this ‘weight’ coming from?” He added those atrocious air-quotes with his first two fingers around the word ‘weight’. Larry was secretly wondering the same thing. He did a closer examination of the elevator, looking for peculiarities. For the first time, he looked up, and saw a square patch of burgundy surrounding a small break in the flowery embroidery. Upon closer inspection, he found the traces of small bolts where a handle must be fastened on the other side of the patch. He pushed slightly, and did a small hop to push his head above the ceiling of the box.

A name flashed across his vision as he stared into a familiar face. A face that had emblazoned the cover of many a newspaper. A face that nobody had seen among the living for six weeks. Five more similar corpses littered the top of the elevator. One blue eye and one green lit up the darkness. Joseph slammed the doors shut just in time to conceal Larry’s final scream.