It was a typical day for Lottie. Wake up and get ready for work. Avoid the wandering eyes and hands on the subway. Decide between the potentially empty stairwell or the crowded elevator. Either way, there could be danger, but that is just life for Lottie.
Finally, make it to the office, dodge the nosy person from accounting. Avoid the water cooler at all costs. Everyone congregates there - talk and touch become unavoidable. By timing it just right, Lottie can slide into her office and have the door shut before her assistant is back from gathering the morning's mail.
No open door policy at this office. That could lead to small talk, and then people would touch things in her office, and they wouldn't leave. Better if they just emailed. When lunch rolled around, Lottie was afraid she forgot her thermos of tomato soup. If she had to leave the office during the day, she'd run into to someone. Then she'd have to talk, maybe go out to eat. Other people would touch her plate, her silverware. What if they wanted to go somewhere with salads? She might choke on a raisin or a piece of lettuce. Thankfully the soup turned up. She was able to drink her lunch—no choking or dropping food on herself today.
The rest of the workday passed. Lottie stayed in her office well past five. The timing was just as important as in the morning - leave too early, and someone may still be working. Leave too late, and she'd run into housekeeping and be on the night trains with the talkative bar crowd.
Disaster. The accounting team was meeting late with another office. So many greetings and handshakes and offers of lunch to turn down. What an awful end to the day. Lottie walks quickly to the elevator before the accountants can gather their things. Blessed silence on the way down. Lottie closes her eyes and just breathes for a moment. She tries to calm her racing heart, slow her breathing.
Wait. It's very silent. Lottie opens her eyes. It's dark. Why is it so dark? The emergency lights come on. The elevator is dimly lit, the panel dark, the doors closed tight. Trapped, just dangling in the elevator shaft.
Of all the luck. She picks up the emergency phone. Of course, there is no text option. She takes a shuddering breath and prepares herself to speak to another person. A voice comes over the line, "We are experiencing heavy call volume, please leave a message." Lottie sighs in relief and speaks calmly and clearly, "Hello, I am alone. The panel says this is elevator number 3 in the west shaft. I was coming down from the 42nd floor. Thank you so much!"
Lottie sits back and smiles as she is utterly alone for the first time since she left her house that morning. Empty elevators are actually quite serene. The distant shouting of the accounting team does disturb the peace just a bit. Perhaps she'll luck out, and they'll rescue that elevator first. A woman can dream.
(Image information: "Emergency Phone" by haven't the slightest is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0)
Author's Note: This story was inspired by Fear from the Turkish Fairy Tales unit. In the original story a young man doesn't know fear and sets out to find it. He is faced with a variety of unusual situations - fighting a sea monster, hands rising from a grave, almost being strangled. None of these cause him fear. He is finally startled and briefly experiences fear when a bird flies out of a soup pot. I felt like turning the story around and having a character who was afraid or felt anxiety about just about everything in their day. People in the subway, crowded elevator, choking on a raisin, small talk at work. Only to be headed home, end up in what most people would consider a situation to actually fear and just be like "Actually, this is fantastic."
Story source: Forty-four Turkish Fairy Tales by Ignacz Kunos, with illustrations by Willy Pogany (1913).
Hi Eli! I really enjoyed reading your story. This week I am trying out the TAG commenting strategy, so here it goes. I like how the reader is gradually learning more about Lottie as the story goes on. I was wondering about that line from the first paragraph for a bit-"either way there could be danger"- and I was wondering where this story was headed. Is Lottie a spy? But as the story goes on, we see she is very anti-social. Did you ever consider explaining how she ended up like this? Or if she has always been like this? If you ever decide to revise this story, that would be interesting! I can see how it would be hard to include a detailed backstory with word-length constraints. I thought it was interesting how once the emergency happened, Lottie was most at peace as she realized she was finally alone. One suggestion might be mentioning at least what she is doing at her job while working. I only say that because that was the setting for most the story and I'm curious how it would be possible with her condition. Fantastic story Eli! I hope you have a great weekend!
ReplyDeleteHi Eli!
ReplyDeleteTo begin, your story telling style is fantastic. The writing syntax made it so easy to understand what kind of person Lottie is. After reading the story, one question that I had was what do you think made her the way she is? It seems very apparent that she avoids talking to people and also wanted soup so she would not have to eat. I wish we could have seen a little more of what happened after this, was the problem ever resolved? This probably would have killed my claustrophobia.
Hey Eli! This is such a good story! I also read the original story and at no point did I think of such a great story as this one. You did such a good job of setting the scene and showing just how Lottie is as a person. I wonder why Lottie is like this? Is there something in her past that made her be this way? i think it would be a great idea to tell us her life story in another edition. Great job!
ReplyDeleteHey, Eli!
ReplyDeleteI really loved your syntax throughout your story. I think it helps a lot with the dramatizing of the plot and setting by having punctuated sentences as your story did. Things like, "disaster." and "wait." beginning paragraphs and following them really made it seem like the reader had to stop in their tracks to fully take in the situation and make it feel as though they were really there! How did you manage to include such syntax throughout your story telling, and how did you manage to think to incorporate the amount of detail as you went along with this type of writing style? I feel as thought many people would keep the detail short and sweet with this type of style, but you manage to include a lot more detail alongside it! I feel as though the story could go a lot longer with the ending and some in the beginning, too, so I think you should try that out.
Great job!
Hi Eli,
ReplyDeleteYou have given your audience an excellent character in this piece. Lottie's anxiety and her personality are so subtly written without the need for a blunt reveal and I really enjoy that type of writing. From the way you wrote her inner thoughts, I got a very good sense of who she is enough for me to connect to her as a narrator.
What if you included some of the noises that she might hear going on around her? What does she hear that makes her so anxious? You could use sound words and very emphatic language that could communicate to the reader just how chaotic she feels in her life.
If I have to give a suggestion it would be to extend the story a little bit, really let your audience live in Lottie's relief at being alone or, prior to that, make us suffer more in her feeling overwhelmed.
Amazing job, Eli!