The Ninth Floor © Christopher J. Jacobsmeyer
You know that feeling you get when you're half asleep and you're just out of it? That's the feeling I've been having my entire life. Well, what I can remember of it, anyway. Me and everyone else in this Godforsaken building.
The year was uncertain. From what we could see outside through the windows, the urbanized area that we were in had been devastated quite some time ago. The ravages of war? The fallout from a dropped nuke? Plague? Disease? No one knew.
It was hard to explain. We knew certain things, and we knew that we knew them before we came to be in this building. There was just no other explanation for the origins of that knowledge. What we did know for certain was that we were locked up inside this building for as long as we can remember. Floors One through Nine.
Which was extremely odd, come to think of it. The building all around us were of the tall variety. Tall enough to be skyscrapers, really. The single stairway within our building led up to the ninth floor, then it just stopped. It didn't go any higher.
The elevator, on the other hand, had buttons leading all the way up to the ninety-sixth floor. But the only ones that worked worth a damn were the first nine. Frustrating indeed for those of us with limited environs with which to live out our meager existence.
There were maybe fifty or sixty of us at the most. We never bothered taking an accurate accounting because it didn't matter. If we didn't see some of our neighbors from other floors for a prolonged period of time, we simply forgot them. Sure, if we ran into them again, the familiarity would come right back.
You're probably wondering right about now what the hell's wrong with us. Truth be told, I can't tell you. I wish I could. My guess, if I had to take a stab at it, was that there was something in the air. That dreamlike state had to come from somewhere. Surely we can't all be that stupid.
Oh, my name is Dominick. I have a wife and two kids. Sarah would kill me if I forgot about her, so I tend to stick close to her. The kids are young, and the others on our floor help us to look after them. We were the lucky peeps to reside on the ninth floor.
One floor was pretty much the same as any other, except for the lowest ones. The first floor was the medical ward. Chests fully supplied with medical equipment and medicines lined one wall of the floor. None of us really knew what it was to be a doctor, but then there were plenty of manuals to be found regarding the practice. If a procedure needed to be done, we could usually find our way through it. At the opposite wall of the first floor was the revolving door. It led to the outside.
Maddening, isn't it? For the first few years that we became “aware”, we attempted to budge it. But it would not budge. Eventually, we just stopped trying. It became to us a window to the outside world that we would never again know. Assuming, that is, if we ever knew it in the first place.
The second floor was the cafeteria. Every morning and every evening, food would roll out on a conveyor belt from behind a locked room. We didn't know what was back there, or what was preparing our food. Again, it didn't matter. We just took it for granted like most of our other amenities.
Floors Three through Nine were nearly identical. We don't remember how we ended up on the ninth floor. Could've been status, could've been the humidity. It was anyone's guess. We tried not to think about the sterile air as much as humanly possible.
Could we even be called human given these conditions that we lived in?
That question has been asked many a time, and each and every time it's asked, we'd all sigh and move on. Such was life.
Today was a bit different, though. Sarah was in her ninth month of pregnancy, and she had just gone into labor. It came as quite a surprise to us when the doors to the elevator opened up and a short, squat figure in green armor and a helmet stepped out.
My wife was breathing rapidly. The baby was coming, but I couldn't quite take my sight off the figure. He wasn't immediately recognizable to me as any of our other floor neighbors. He pointed to me.
“Youse! Stepse awayse fromse herse! Comse withse mese!” He (or least I assumed that it was a he) stepped forward and grabbed my arm. Something about his commanding tone would not let me resist. I wanted to be there for Sarah, but I was powerless.
As the elevator doors closed between me and my wife, my last sight of the ninth floor was of others scrabbling to her aid. * * * The glowing red numerals over the door to the elevator gradually increased. I wasn't quite sure what to make of it when the feeling of being lifted into the air was experienced when everything inside me screamed that the ninth floor was the top of our world.
Minutes passed before the elevator lurched to a stop. The doors opened, and the sight that greeted me was horrific.
Row after row of seats filled the room. In the majority of the seats, people that I had once known but forgotten (until now) sat and trembled.
Trembled wasn't quite the word, though. It was as if their heads were rolling from side to side in slow rotation.
The green-armored figure shoved me from the elevator. “Preparese tose bese brainwashedse!”
Funny. Hadn't I already been brainwashed years ago? * * * Some time later, a sense of tranquility washed over me. I was back on the elevator heading down to my wife. There was no green-armored figure next to me, but then there was probably no need for him to be. I was willingly going down.
The doors opened, and my wife was sitting there against the wall with a baby clutched tightly to her. She had a wide smile on her face. “It's a boy!” She held him up for me to see.
I tried to apologize for being gone in her time of need, but she shushed me. It was enough that I was with her there, now. As the rest of the day went on, our neighbors from Floors Three through Eight came up to greet the newest resident of the building. It was a cause for celebration, and the conveyor belt actually took this into consideration for a change. Instead of hardtack and water, we were given the rare rack of lamb and the finest red wine. * * * While I was busy occupying myself with the celebration, my wife died in labor thirty-four floors below. I was none the wiser.
________________________ My work is scheduled to appear in five anthos from Library of the Living Dead Press/Library of Horror Press (including Zombonauts, Baconology, and The Scroll of Anubis), four anthos from Pill Hill Press, and various other outlets. I've only been subbing for two months, but thus far I have met with great success. Christopher J. Jacobsmeyer is also the publisher of a new imprint, Lame Goat Press with two anthologies underway.
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