If the express elevator reserved for the executive elite which Lester B. Schnock normally took hadn’t been undergoing cleaning after insurgents had daubed its walls with bovine blood, he would have still been alive, kissing ass, clicking heels and being the despicable grovelling quisling his employers appreciated him for.

Stepping into the elevator Schnock became increasingly irate as it stopped successively at three of the lower floors for Aimée, Cross and Maude. He liked the fact that the scanty dress Aimée wore hugged her curvaceous body like cling film on a chicken filet, but didn’t like the fact that she took no notice of the important man he saw himself as. He was envious of the air of virility which Cross effused and annoyed Aimée didn’t take her eyes off the younger man’s reflection in the elevator’s polished aluminium doors. To top off this cocktail of mixed emotions, Lester B. Schnock’s bigotry was in the red zone since Maude flaunted his homosexuality in such a way it made him want to use the dainty nickel-plated revolver with a mother-of-pearl handle he wore in a holster under his grey seersucker suit.

After suddenly free-falling past twenty five floors, the shock of the emergency braking system dragging the elevator to a quaking halt threw them around the confined space like mannequins in an automobile crash test, screaming and yelling profanities as their bodies were forced to defy gravity. Maude broke his right wrist, two ribs and three of his front teeth were knocked out. Aimée got a black eye and her platinum blonde bouffant was all messed up. Unable to maintain his usual cool, Cross suspected a bruised ego. Lester B. Schnock died not because of injuries received during their vertiginous fall, but from a tsunami of fear which provoked a massive heart attack.

‘Is he dead?’ Aimée choked, licking blood from a split lip as Cross knelt over Luzinski’s prostrate body.

‘Either of you know first aid?’ Cross said breathlessly. ‘Isn’t this the scene from the staff training video where an upstanding employee is supposed to give the kiss of life?’

‘Kiss?’ Maude hissed, rivulets of blood gushing from his gums. ‘The way he looked at me I wouldn’t touch the swine with a barge pole. Has anyone seen my teeth? This is going to cost the company plenty when my lawyer gets his claws into them.’

‘He’s not breathing.’ Cross said. ‘No heart beat.’

‘Shit.’ Aimée shrieked as she yanked the emergency telephone handset out from the compartment in the wall of the elevator. ‘Some joker cut through the phone cord.’

Scrambling around on all fours, Maude found two of his teeth and slipped them in a pocket of his ski pants. ‘Probably the same psycho who carved Death to Meat Eating Vertical Time Travellers on the wood panelling there.’ He squawked, indicating graffiti scratched on one of the elevator walls. ‘Anyone got a cell phone?’

Gingerly examining a cut on his forehead, Cross shrugged. ‘Left mine on my desk. I was just going down to line up outside with the nicotine outlaws.’

‘Bet he’s got one.’ Aimée said, pointing at Lester B. Schnock. ‘Kind of man who’s got everything except what’s essential.’

‘My,’ Maude whimpered as Cross emptied Schnock’s pockets, ‘is that a real gun? Is that real mother-of-pearl? Let me see that.’

‘No phone.’ Cross said, passing Schnock’s gun to Maude. ‘Wallet. Keys. Change. Pens. Breath freshener. A silver pill box. Man with halitosis and a weak heart.’

Aimée found the leopard skin print stiletto slingback which had come off in the fracas, grumbling as she forced it on. ‘Never take advice from shoe store sales people. I knew I should have taken a five and a half. Do you think anyone know’s we’re stuck here? I wonder who he was before he died. Check out his wallet.’

‘Pass me that pill box.’ Maude said, his whole body trembling. ‘Maybe he’s got Xanax. I’m a double Scorpio but my astrologer says my aura is as fragile as a Fabergé egg.’

‘Lester B. Schnock,’ Cross said, fanning out the contents of the wallet, ‘a Vice President. Here’s a photograph of Mrs. Meanmouth Schnock in a chartreuse polyester jumpsuit and two little weasel-faced Schnock’s with pimples and braces on the lawn in exurbia next to a labrador with red eyes. Pool with plastic palms on an island centrepiece. Garage bigger than my house. Driver’s licence, concertina of credit cards. No cash.’

The sound of Maude choking drew Cross’ attention away from the dead man.    ‘You taking his medication?’

‘Can you even begin to imagine what this has done to my chakra?’ Maude gasped, emptying the pill box into his bloodied mouth. ‘With my panic attacks, I never take the elevator for more than six floors at a time. Then I get out, do my breathing exercises and chant a little mantra. Then when I’m all tickety-boo I hop another one. But never more than six floors at a time. They tried to fire me for wasting company time, but I took them to Court. Got lucky with a cute Judge who’d just come out.’

Sudden violent juddering prompted Aimée to throw herself at Cross and hug him. Cowering on the floor in a corner, Maude wept, arms wrapped tightly around his gaunt frame. Above groaning sounds of machinery in the shaft above them and metal scraping on concrete walls as the elevator suddenly dropped another fifty feet came a crisp crack as the gun in Maude’s hand fired a single round.

When the elevator jerked to a quaking halt Aimée found herself sprawled horizontal on the floor, dress hiked up to her waist, arms and legs akimbo beneath Cross.

‘I’m Aimée.’ She whispered, her full lips brushing against his.

‘Cross.’

‘Hell no. A big brute who dominates me is my fantasy. I married a midget. Some jerk with a hairy chest and a Korean convertible I’d slept with on a first date stood me up on the second, so I got drunk in a bar in some hotel where there was this convention for handicapped circus performers. This guy was so small he couldn’t get up on the barstool but he was having him a Happy Hour like there was no tomorrow, looking up at me with eyes like a lost puppy. I felt sorry for him and the next thing I remember was Piña Colada perfumed hiccups punctuating me saying I do over and over in some marriage parlour called the Hitching Post. Divorce is out of the question since I’m Catholic, although my best friend Conchita says since it was never consummated I’d have grounds but what the hell. You just can’t dump an unemployed, handicapped alcoholic midget clown on the grounds his dick is about as much use as a rancid cocktail sausage.’

When Cross wriggled and she felt his stiffness pushing against her she licked blood from her split lip before slipping her tongue in and out his mouth. Hastily beginning to remove the necessary clothing to pursue their tryst they giggled when Maude groaned and called for his mother before sighing and passing out again.

‘Is he dead too?’ Aimée whispered, fumbling with buttons and zips.

‘Bullet missed his aura.’ Cross chuckled. ‘Blew his kneecap away. He’ll live.’

‘Ouch. That hurts.’

‘You’re a virgin?’

‘Hell no. The corner of Lester B. Schnock’s briefcase is sticking into my ass.’

When Cross tugged the leather briefcase from beneath her the lid flew open, a stack of glossy magazines spilling out beside them.

‘I am hallucinating?’ Aimée gushed, turning her head to ogle a photograph in the magazine nearest to her. ‘Holy schmoly. That must be retouched, right? There’s no way a guy can be that well hung. Is there?’ 

Cross raised his head from her breasts to glance at the magazine. ‘Now you know why he was a Vice President. He subscribed to Ich Lieber Dick. Purveyors of porn for the discerning pervert.’ 

‘Lemme turn over.’ Aimée gasped. ‘I wanna take a good look at this filth.’

In their hurry to change positions, Cross kicked Lester B. Schnock in the face, cracking one of the lenses of his gold rimmed spectacles. His corpse slumped slowly over until one side of his ashen face was in the pool of blood oozing from Maude’s knee.

‘Slow down.’ Aimée panted, gawking at the pornographic images as she slowly turned pages. ‘Make this fuck last for fuck’s sake. Look at that. If the dead guy wasn’t dead and the gay guy wasn’t gay we could have tried that.’

They fornicated with demoniacal intensity before they were rescued, inspired by the explicit and idiosyncratic carnal education offered in the dog-eared pages of Lester B. Schnock’s personal copies of Ich Lieber Dick.

As the elevator was finally lowered manually to the ground floor by firemen, Aimée succumbed to a final demand from Cross that they do it like the albino negro Father Christmas and the teenage schoolgirl with too much cellulite to be a schoolgirl in the centrefold spread of last year’s Special Christmas issue of the magazine.

When the elevator finally reached the ground floor they flopped out into the blinding white light of a barrage of flashbulbs, TV cameras, microphones and a cacophony of questions from the media. Ushered through the crowd by paramedics and police, Aimée teased her hair and walked like a penguin having trouble keeping a suppository in place, Cross cool even with his fly open when he answered reporter’s questions, telling them coming so close to death was no big deal.

There came cries and screams amidst a sudden kerfuffle when three figures clad in protective rubber suits and gas masks charged through the crowd towards Cross and Aimée, hurling buckets of boiling cow’s blood mixed with mashed offal all over them.

‘Death to Meat Eating Vertical Time Travellers!’ Came repeated muffled screams from behind the insurgent’s rubber gas masks as they were overcome by the forces of law and order. 



Michael Loughrey was born in London, but has lived for long periods in NYC, LA and Paris, and is currently living in Norfolk in the U.K.