tfw ur about to go on an ~adventure~ on the elevator!

Every now and then, you have one of those days where you accidentally press the wrong button in the elevator, and wind up on a different floor… or… planet. Bwogger Sarah Dahl is here to tell you all about it.

It’s one of those days. Mid-September. It feels like it should still be summer, mostly because of the weather, but also because you aren’t f**ing prepared for all the reading that’s suddenly piled up. Couldn’t teachers have sent out syllabi over the summer so you could’ve gotten ahead when you had all that free time?

Whatever. This is a world that doesn’t make sense. But it’s about to get a whole lot weirder…

You stroll down 116th Street. It’s Thursday, 6 pm, and you’re sober. Classes are done for the week, and you’re looking ahead to a nice three-day stretch of semi-relaxation and reading in the Law Library.

You walk into your dorm, flash your ID, and pop into the elevator. It goes up. You get out. You walk down the hall. You open the door to your suite. It’s not your suite. Wait… this is the fifth floor, right? You hastily back out of the door to check… but the ugly linoleum-tiled hallway is gone. In its place is a seemingly endless mahogany-paneled corridor. What the fuck? I don’t live in Hartley, you think. What kind of sick joke… Whose RA would cover their bulletin boards in fake wood? Where are the alcohol awareness signs?

You pinch yourself to make sure you aren’t dreaming. You run through what you ate and drank and smoked today–nope, you’re definitely sober.

You gain your bearings. You’re still standing in the threshold of the suite, one foot inside it, and one foot in the corridor, propping the door open. The suite looks more intriguing. You let the door slam closed and follow the winding passage, hoping to meet some people who can tell you what’s going on.

You open the door of what would be your room in your *real* (or former?) suite. It’s beautiful. There’s a four-poster bed, a huge armoire, and an Apple Watch on the desk. The door to your closet instead reveals a marble bathroom with a claw-foot tub. Wow! And the view! You’re no longer shafted; instead, the window gazes out at a city dazzling with white lights and palm trees.

What is this place? It’s definitely not New York, but it doesn’t seem like Florida, either. The palm trees are misleading. Maybe, you wonder, thinking back to the basic physics you learned in Astronomy, you’ve time-traveled and landed on another planet? Possible?

Whatever. You spend the next few hours exploring the city. No one’s around. It’s kind of like Inception. Your iPhone 6 quickly dies, and you lose all hope of contacting the “Old World.” Goddamn! Good thing you have the new Apple Watch.

Hours, then days pass by. Your suite’s kitchen is magically stocked with all kinds of food that you never have to pay for. The scale in the bathroom says you’ve lost weight. You forget about all the assignments you had this weekend, because how can you turn them in? You see no one. It seems you’re the only soul on this planet. The only thing that sounds remotely like life is the sound of wolves howling around 11 pm each night, but when you venture out to look for them, you find it’s just a speaker in the empty town square blasting Kanye’s “Wolves.”

You’ve never been so lonely in your life.

One day, as you exit the suite, intending to head down the mahogany corridor that leads to some stairs that lead into the city, you’re startled. The mahogany corridor is gone. What is this place? It reminds you faintly of something else, of somewhere you used to live, of someone you once were. You feel creeping nostalgia, but also dread.

You walk down the corridor. The elevator opens. You get in. You get out. You walk down the hall, open the door to a suite, and suddenly, it all comes back to you–college, New York, Earth.

Your Apple Watch is gone, but your newly recharged phone says it’s October 28th. A month and a half have gone by since you left the world. What happened in the meantime? You realize that someone else, an alternate version of you, has been living your old life, going through the motions, zombie-like. You’re pissed. The afterlife is nice, but it’s time to reenter your old universe, and take your life back! It’s  yours, after all. How could you forget about it?

happy elevator people via Wikimedia Commons