STRGS 02

Chapter 2

Elevator to Myself

The convenience store in front of my building was locked, perhaps because the part-timer had gone to the bathroom. Left with no choice, I headed to another supermarket 15 minutes away.

‘Let’s get one lunch box for tomorrow morning and buy the newly released ramen to eat for tonight………………. Ah, let’s buy beer and snacks too.’

I had come out to buy a light late-night snack, but my hands had grown quite heavy.

“Would you like a bag? Paying by card?”

“Yes, please. I’ll pay with Pay. Here.”

Fumbling through my pocket, I pulled out my cell phone, which was vibrating endlessly with notifications. My hand extending it to scan the payment QR code was almost embarrassing.

As soon as she bagged the items, I quickly grabbed them and stepped outside.

‘What on earth are all these notifications all of a sudden?’

There is a new post on the guestbook! — There is a new post on the guestbook! — There is a new post on the guestbook! — There is a new post on the guestbook!

“What, did some malicious macro bot attach itself?”

I heard malicious AI advertising macros were circulating, and it seemed they had attached themselves to my blog too. I should delete and report them as soon as I get home. My pace quickened a bit.

‘Oh, lucky.’

It seemed I wasn’t the only late-night snack hunter out at this hour.

The elevator was stopped right on the 1st floor.

This studio apartment building I live in has 40 households crammed into 10 floors, yet this is the only elevator.

On top of that, it boasts a slug-like speed and endless breakdowns, as if it hasn’t been replaced once since the building was built, so once it goes up, waiting forever was a given.

Checking behind me to see if anyone else was getting on, I quickly tapped the close button repeatedly. As I pressed the 7th floor button, the elevator moved up with an old motor sound.

— The elevator has arrived.

“What? Did it break down again?”

The elevator stopped on the 4th floor. This was a malfunction I experienced almost once a week. Stopping on a different floor than the button pressed. The landlord would probably only replace it with a new one if this elevator actually crashed.

Clicking my tongue, I pressed the 7th floor button again. The elevator moved once more. 5, 6…………….

Then suddenly,

Clunk.

“Ugh.”

With a jolting sensation in the elevator, my body lurched downward sharply. This time, I really thought it was plummeting. The doors rattled and opened.

‘Let’s just walk up. It’s not even 2 floors away.’

The moment I tried to step out, my body froze. Instead of the hallway that should have been familiar, a damp smell rushed in alongside an alien landscape.

“What……………… am I……………… looking at……………….”

The white tiles were stained with blood, taking on a pinkish hue, and half of the fluorescent lights were shattered, flickering intermittently.

On the operating table lay a chunk of flesh that seemed to be a human being. Fingernail scratches packed the wallpaper densely enough to form a pattern.

It was like a mad scientist’s dissection room. Human groans could be heard. Behind a curtain hanging on one wall, an arm flailed about before being dragged away with a scream.

A wet lump of meat made a long, sticky dragging sound against the floor as it was hauled somewhere.

Without time to think, I frantically pounded the close button. The curtain fluttered, and the chunk of flesh behind it reached an arm out toward me.

In between the dark red, distorted flesh, our gazes met. A human eyeball, an eye, bloodshot, glared frantically at me.

Save me. Save me. Get me out.

The doors closed. The elevator moved again. Upward. No, was the concept of “up” even correct?

Through my shaking field of vision, I checked the elevator floor display. There were no numbers. Symbols and red characters flickered and changed arbitrarily.

“What on earth, right now, is………………”

The elevator lurched and stopped again, and the doors opened.

Reflexively, I pressed my body against the corner furthest from the elevator doors.

When a person gets tense, their lungs swell and their chest feels constricted. Gasping for air, I stared at the landscape unfolding before me.

Acrid smoke, mixed with a fishy stench, burst into the elevator.

In the rotten soil, dozens of dry, twisted trees were withering. From every branch, people were hanging. Their pitch-black faces were shaped like skulls, with tongues pulled out as long as their torsos.

In a place without wind, the corpses swayed to the same rhythm like rotten fruit. Round and round. Round and round. Their rotten eye sockets looked toward the elevator in unison. Looking at me.

“Come here.”

“You too.”

“Let’s do it together.”

Their mouths weren’t moving, but the voices jammed directly into my head. Ropes began to sprout from the rotten soil and crawl up. Wiggling and squirming, as the ropes approached the elevator like snakes, the rotten stench grew stronger.

“Get away! Don’t come near me!!”

When I kicked the rope away, I felt a squishy, heavy warmth, as if kicking a living creature. After kicking away ropes that crawled in a few more times, the doors finally closed. The elevator began going up again—no, to be exact, it began moving.

Where did the 7th floor go? Where was my house? Could I have gotten the building wrong? That couldn’t be. Until I got into the elevator, everything was as it should be. Surely. Surely.

My head felt like it was going to explode. This was a malfunction. A hallucination. It could be explained. It had to be. Ghost stories, ghosts—

There was no way they actually existed.

I pressed the emergency button.

Static—

“Yes, security office. How may I help you?”

The security guard’s voice flowed out.

“Sir, I’m from unit 703. I think the elevator is broken. Could you stop it manually? The floors are displaying strangely.”

Instead of an answer, only crackling electronic static echoed from the speaker.

Fidgeting nervously, I stomped my feet while waiting for the next voice.

“The 7th floor does not exist.”

“Pardon?”

“In our elevator, the 7th floor does not exist.

The 7th floor is the 7th floor does not exist exist can go floor is ele our vator—”

The voice stretched out grotesquely. Accompanied by a metallic scratching sound, the sentences repeated and cut off, turning into a complete mess of sound. An indescribable noise. A sound like chewing bones. A sound of screaming under water.

“Exist can go to exist floor is for guests death stay jump off our now”

The emergency speaker turned off. Unable to even catch my breath, I slowly tried pressing the speaker button again. Once. And once more.

No sound came out anymore.

— Arriving at the next floor.

Along with the familiar announcement sound, the elevator began to move again. The ceiling light flickered several times. Clutching the handrail inside the elevator tightly, I crouched down in the corner.

What did I do wrong? Did I attempt some ghost story? I’ve never done a ghost story in the apartment building. Then, why?

‘Think, Seon Jaehyun. There’s no problem without an answer.’

With trembling hands, I pulled out my cell phone. No signal. Out of service area. Forget apps that use data—even emergency calls and text messages were completely dead.

“………………Not even 119 works, this is really……………….”

As if I had bitten the skin inside my mouth, a fishy taste of blood filled my mouth. Thanks to that, my thoughts became vivid.

A ghost story is real.

I felt like my breath was choking. Even though it was a real ghost story I had searched for so desperately, I didn’t mean I wanted to suffer through it like this, in this situation.

I also realized I shouldn’t blame missing people in ghost stories for why they didn’t call the police. 21st-century ghost stories start with losing signal from telecom carriers.

— There is a new post on the guestbook!

A notification popped up on the top bar of my phone. Even in an out-of-service state? Was it somehow connected to Wi-Fi? Like grasping at a lifeline, I began opening all sorts of apps and websites on my phone.

Nothing opened. Broken text, grotesque pictures, distorted wav waveforms, and squeaking noises continued endlessly.

‘Please, let something open. Open.’

Just one thing brought up a proper window. It was my blog, accessed via the notification pop-up. Even then, only working features were recognizable. Search, view posts, guestbook. The latest post on the guestbook flashed.

≪We are going to have a good time.≫ ≪We are waiting for your response.≫ ≪We are waiting for your response.≫ ≪We are waiting for your…………≫

Underneath the problematic ‘chain letter’ spam, messages were being uploaded continuously without end. I hurriedly re-read the chain letter. Words I hadn’t cared about earlier came into view.

1 hour, limit, misfortune, response.

‘All this mess happened because I didn’t answer for an hour?’

No way. Trying hard to push dark thoughts out of my head, I decided to solve the immediate problem at hand first. The internet was out, yet my blog was visible. Then, thinking from a ghost story verification perspective, there was only one reason.

Whether I was the protagonist of the ghost story or Victim X, it meant the entity behind the ghost story wanted me to act.

A solution wouldn’t come logically. I had to think, deduce, and escape in a ghost-story manner. Before the elevator arrived somewhere.

I entered keywords like #elevator #another_world #floor_movement into the search bar and quickly skimmed through the posts.

After scrolling down for a long time, an old ghost story caught my eye. It was a translated foreign ghost story scraped from a personal homepage.

[ ]

An elevator to another world.

「Upon boarding that elevator, one can continue to ascend upward. However, the elevator does not stop at normal floors. Once onboard, it connects to another dimension, and every time it stops, a different landscape is reflected. If you step out of the elevator, you are trapped there forever.」

I scrolled down.

「The place where the elevator arrives differs for each rider, and it is said to ultimately guide them to the place the rider desires most.

Riders who survived from the elevator all testified that the elevator took them to heaven, where they met dearly departed loved ones who had already died.」

「There are no reports of testimony from anyone who did not step off the elevator.」

「The end of the elevator has never been reported.」

Clunk. The elevator doors opened.

This time, there was neither blood nor ropes.

Outside the door was my room. Disarrayed bookshelves, ghost story materials piled on the desk, a turned-off monitor. It was so familiar that, without realizing it, I almost stepped outside.

‘Get a grip.’

I slapped my own cheek once. If it had shown the 7th floor hallway, I would have stepped out. It was fortunate that my room showed up directly.

When I stayed glued to the corner without moving a muscle, the elevator illuminated my room for a long while before…… the doors closed again.

I cooled my head. I clicked on and read all the ghost stories scattered in the form of reports and testimonies.

— Requesting help via emergency speaker then asking for emergency release – Failed. — Attempting to step off at any floor to escape outside – Failed. No return records reported. — Attempting to communicate inside the elevator with people outside – Failed.

I organized them one by one in my head. Boarding the elevator, seeing the landscapes, returning or failing to return.

Assuming all testimonies in the ghost stories are real.

The end of the elevator was never reported. In other words, people who saw the end either didn’t return, or everyone survived and returned before seeing the end.

Why did those people step off? What did they see that made them think ‘it’s okay to step off’?

The elevator stops and opens endlessly.

My room, Gwanghwamun intersection, the company office, firefighters shouting that it’s safe to come out, my parents’ home, the hospital, the convenience store I often visit, and the 1st floor hallway again………….

‘It has stopped deviating from landscapes I know.’

Bloody movie-like landscapes no longer appeared.

‘Is it because I was thinking of safe places?’

The elevator stopped again. The smell of blood rushed in once more. An old American rural house and an axe stuck in the middle of the dining table. Underneath, people lie sprawled covered in blood.

「Ms. Margaret Swinton, who boarded the elevator, testified that landscapes of her family being murdered appeared endlessly. Ms. Swinton’s family of four was murdered with an axe while she was away, and as the initial discoverer of the incident……………」

It was a landscape matching the last ghost story post I read.

‘It might be reading my thoughts. If I focus on the thought that I’m hungry……………..’

— The elevator has arrived.

The doors open. The landscape of my favorite restaurant is reflected. The smell of food, and the busy owner moving around are exactly as I pictured.

I close my eyes and clear my thoughts. I visualize a destination, not what I desire. The single pathway through which a ghost story can connect beyond manifestation to the original reality.

And I began pressing the elevator buttons.

10th floor, 4th floor, 2nd floor, 6th floor, 2nd floor, 10th floor. And… 5th floor.

‘When arriving in another world, pressing the buttons in reverse order causes it to start returning to the original world.’

Defining this place as another world and fixing reality as the destination.

For the ghost story to possess completeness, the return to reality and the origin of the ghost story intersect and connect.

— Liar.

The moment a short word was heard from the speaker, the elevator began descending at a fierce speed with its doors wide open.

— Even though you wanted to return.

I float simultaneously with the drop. The top of the elevator recedes endlessly as the scenery stretches. A voice calls out to me. A nostalgically unfamiliar voice.

Do you know?

I don’t know.

No, I know.

The single thing I was searching for—

— The doors are opening.

The elevator stopped. Between the opening doors, fluorescent lights flickered, and the bustling noise of people surged in.

“Oh my. Isn’t that 703? You were trapped inside the elevator?”

The security guard poked his body into the elevator. Gravity. Swaying. Weight. Sensations naturally felt inside an elevator.

It was reality.

I dashed right outside.

“I survived………………!”

My face must have been quite a mess. Though he could have been annoyed about occupying the elevator, I received only comfort instead.

“Were you trapped for long? Didn’t you press the emergency button?”

“I, I really pressed the emergency button more than twenty times……………….”

“Oh dear, something must have broke. I’ll have to call a technician first thing tomorrow. Just in case, please use the stairs until the technician comes.”

In truth, even if told it was okay to ride, no one would have ridden it. Because everyone quickly headed toward the stairs.

I bolted up the 7th floor stairs in one breath. Only after checking more than 10 times that there were no anomalies with the hallway and door did I step into my house. Exhaustion rushed in all at once along with hunger.

‘I should at least have a glass of beer.’

Opening the plastic bag, a stench wafted out. All the food that had been perfectly fine was rotten. It looked as if it had been left out for at least several weeks.

— There is a new post on the guestbook!

The laptop, which I had definitely shut the lid on, was ostentatiously open toward me, its screen glowing brightly. It felt as if laughter could be heard from the latest post uploaded to the guestbook.

Would you like to respond to your fortune?

“Ha. Are you crazy.”

Asking if I’ll respond—I slammed the laptop shut again with a loud thud.