your floor

(520 words)

Item #: SCP-XXX

Object Class: Uncontained

Special Containment Procedures: Protocol is centered on weakening elevator maintenance standards to ensure a persistent identity of elevator fragility in the public conscious. Sudden elevator failure depictions are to be propagated across all genres of popular media, supplemented by other similar mass-vigilance focused efforts.

Personnel are advised to stay alert when encountering and using elevators. If possible, use the stairs.

Description: SCP-XXX is an elevator cab.

SCP-XXX resides in locations familiar to its targets, and will manifest when they attempt to call an elevator while otherwise distracted. Targets will always be alone. Targets may recognize the elevator arriving much faster than expected. Arriving exactly when expected is a guaranteed indicator of activity.

Anomalous behavior will begin after the target enters the cab and selects their destination.¹ The door will close. After a short pause, victims will notice a jolt of movement, but will be unable to further approximate the speed or direction the cab. Some victims have noted the cab having a slight backwards tilt. Leaning forward does not counteract this sensation.

The cab will never arrive at the victim's selected destination. Victims will fail to notice this for 15-30 seconds past their expected arrival time, though outliers as long as 8 minutes have been observed.² Once aware of a delay, victims report feelings of confusion, panic, and nausea; the latter of which is often rationalized as motion sickness. Any attempts to escape the cab using emergency exits will fail, as they are tightly sealed. Pressing the elevator's buttons will also yield no effect. The exception to this, if present, is an emergency button. Once pressed, an alarm will sound. This will have no beneficial effect.

Victims may notice one or more of the following possible differences between SCP-XXX and the cab it replaced, which have been ordered by ascending rarity:

• Dimensions that are too small for the shaft;
• Incorrect flooring or paneling;
• Buttons for floors that do not exist;
• Missing, extraneous, or occluded exterior windows;
• Dim lighting;
• Dark external scenery;³
• No lighting;
• No external scenery;
• A passenger.⁴

Once a visual incongruity in the cab is intentionally⁵ acknowledged by the victim, they will be ejected from the anomaly. Translocation occurs as they next blink, placing them in a non-anomalous cab moments before it reaches their intended destination floor. Along side visual indicators, victims may experience a momentary loss of balance as the shift occurs.⁶ No further indicators of the transfer have been identified.

An eventual destination for SCP-XXX has been theorized, but no observation cases exist on record. The object's manifestation patterns complicate further research into this topic. As such, the number of unsuccessful escapees from the object remains unknown.

Footnotes

1. In rare cases, the destination floor will already be selected, though the victim will not notice this.

2. Cases are never longer than 8 minutes.

3. May only be visible through a gap in the entrance door.

4. Already within SCP-XXX upon arrival. Instances will not leave the cab.

5. Debated terminology; subjectivity has been accepted in this case.

6. The intensity of this effect is proportional to the duration of the event.

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A Note.

Do you remember your first time in an elevator?

I don’t.

I do remember my first time on an escalator. I got my shoe stuck and it chewed right through and nicked me. Gave me a phobia. Got over it.

Anyway.

Elevators aren't like escalators. They've got no sliding teeth, no steep drop, nothing. You just stand in a box and it brings you somewhere. Blandly. So bland you could stand there fifteen seconds, a minute, or thirty and it’d be basically the same experience. Ignoring the boredom, of course, but boredom's the tradeoff for not having to climb who-knows-how-many flights of stairs in upwards of triple the time. You have somewhere to be, so you don’t mind. You wait. You wait. You wait. Then you get where you're going.

But if you didn't? Have somewhere to be?

You would stand there, blankly, not even pressing any buttons. Idling. Every once in a while, someone else would call the elevator and send you up and down, then leave, and then you'd be back to waiting alone again. Soon another person arrives, and they see you, but you're just on your phone or staring into space, and you might nod to them and say "hi" as they walk in, but then you'll look away to avoid any chance of conversation. It might be weird for you internally, adjusting to the rejection, but you'll know in your heart that you're just another person in an elevator to them. Faceless. And no matter what anyone expects from elevators, there's just going to be other people in them sometimes.

You could do anything, I think, and they shouldn't think anything of it. It's just good manners not to note something slightly off about a stranger, because if you do, people will think you're strange. Sure, that other person was strange first, but bringing any of that attention onto yourself is a risk. Knowing this, this immunity, your options are limitless. Overwhelming, almost, but I know what I would do.

I would watch them.

I would take in the differences in their faces and clothes, how they walk, how they look at me, how they react—if they even do—and I'd remember it all perfectly, each and every little thing. I'd tally them maybe, or play games with new passengers that they don't even know are going on. Little things, like, will they tap their foot? Do they worry when the elevator drops a bit too suddenly? Will they break eye contact first? It becomes exhilarating, after a while. Shameful too, surely, but what else can you do in such a boring, bland, and empty little cab, all alone?

I hope you don't take this wrong, but maybe that's why I was so annoyed when you walked in. I think I've seen you before. You've seen me too, and-

oh. I think this is your floor.

- The Last Stranger You Saw in an Elevator