When the Unexpected Happens

There’s always a moment of stillness just before everything goes wrong. The kind of quiet where you feel as though something’s about to shift, but you can’t put your finger on it. It was a regular Tuesday for me, like any other. The sun shone lazily through my office window as I wrapped up my morning coffee, mentally checking off the to-do list for the day. At 10:30 AM sharp, I stepped into the elevator, my mind on the meeting ahead, barely registering the familiar hum of the lift’s motor.

The usual elevator ride would have lasted a few seconds, the kind where you zone out, flicking through your phone or daydreaming about a lunch you hadn’t yet planned. But that day, the hum was different. The lights flickered, and the elevator came to an abrupt stop.

The Power Cut: An Unexpected Jolt

I remember it happening in slow motion. The flicker of the lights, the unsettling silence, and then the screech of metal as the elevator jerked to a halt. A power cut, I thought. It was familiar enough in the building—old wiring, that sort of thing. As I stood there, waiting for the backup generator to kick in, the strange thing happened.

The elevator didn’t stay still. No, it started moving again. It was subtle at first, the floor indicator barely budging, but soon I realised it was descending, though the lights remained dim and the usual whirr of the machinery was absent. The building’s emergency systems should have kicked in, keeping the elevator where it was, but it was doing the exact opposite of what I expected. Why was it still moving?

What Could Have Happened?

As the elevator continued its descent, my mind raced through the possibilities. Perhaps it was just a glitch—maybe the emergency power source was malfunctioning and was still providing just enough energy to move the lift. After all, modern elevators were designed to descend to the nearest floor during a power cut and then lock down.

But no. This wasn’t the standard “glide to the ground” motion. It felt… deliberate. I pressed the button for the floor I’d been heading to, but it didn’t stop. It just kept going, past the lobby, past my floor, and deeper into the building. A sense of unease began to creep over me, a feeling that something wasn’t right.

The first thought that crossed my mind was: Could the elevator be stuck in some kind of residual movement? Some type of inertia from the motor, still allowing the lift to descend slowly? Maybe. But if that were the case, it should have stopped by now, right? And what about the power? The building was supposed to be on a backup generator, which should have overridden any residual momentum from the motor. The power was off, yet the lift was still moving.

The Realization: Something More?

As I began to consider every technical possibility, it became clear that I was no longer in control of the situation. The elevator felt as though it had a mind of its own, pulling me down deeper into the building, away from the safe routine of everyday life. A growing sense of helplessness started to take hold, the kind that comes when you realize you’re not in control. At first, I tried to dismiss it—maybe it was just malfunctioning. Perhaps it would stop soon.

But the longer I stayed in that moving elevator, the more I began to question my surroundings. Where was I going? Was I the only one in here? How many floors had passed by without a sound? I pressed the emergency button once more, but it was silent, just like everything else.

Then, a thought that I couldn’t shake off: What if there was something in the building that shouldn’t be here? A strange impulse to get out surged through me. I realized the elevator was still descending deeper, lower than any floors I had ever seen on the building’s floor plans. No one talked about these lower floors. And why would they? They were so far down that there was no reason for anyone to go there.

The Quiet Resolution

Eventually, the elevator came to a stop, but not on any floor I recognized. The doors slid open to reveal a narrow hallway, unmarked, with dim, flickering lights that barely lit the way. The sounds of the outside world were absent, replaced only by the hum of distant machinery.

I stepped out, hesitantly, finding that the floor beneath me felt oddly smooth, almost new—like I had stumbled into a place that wasn’t meant for me to see. I don’t remember what happened after that. The next thing I recall is being back at the main lobby, standing in front of the elevator with a strange sense of deja vu.

My phone was buzzing. “Hey, we’re waiting for you in the meeting room. Everything okay?”

I stared at the screen for a long moment. I wasn’t sure how to explain where I’d just been, or if I could explain it at all. I could only wonder whether the elevator had been taking me to a place no one was supposed to know about. Whether the power cut had been the trigger, or perhaps the beginning of something much stranger.

It was never discussed again, and the elevator behaved perfectly the next time I rode it. But as I pressed the button, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the building had secrets—secrets I wasn’t meant to uncover.

And maybe, just maybe, the elevator wasn’t just moving. It was taking me somewhere. Somewhere, it had always been waiting to take me.