Dante's Elevator

I feel like I've been buried alive today in this musty, dingy, dirty building. As far as the weather, it's more of the same, casket gray skies and  intermittent sleet. It never rains cats and dogs on this side of town--more like cockroaches and snakes. Something that hides in the dark corners like I do. Hindered by the rain, without an escape route. In a gloomy, crumbling hole in the stucco walls. The only variation is a route up and down the quietly deteriorating elevator lurking in the rear of the building.

Right after my husband's 50th birthday, I decided to redecorate the kitchen again as a surprise. Henry was livid. Told me to quit spending so much  of his money, told me I was nothing to no one but an aging face. Thought I should get some culture. He sent me off to some literature class to learn about the world. All I know is that is what the elevator reminds me of. 

The trip up to the top becomes gradually darker. The hallways have a rank odor and putrid shades of paint on the walls. The people become stranger, more foreign to an old woman like me--outside a seventh floor window, a young woman drops a bag and chases a hat. The eighth floor displays a black panel van rolling slowly down the street. The view from the ninth floor is of a small boy heading off alone toward the park at dinnertime. By the tenth floor, windows reveal only shadows creeping along the alleys and hovering on street corners. 

The trip down, now that's another story. Try imagining Dante's levels of hell all in one apartment building. We have the pagans, the lustful, the miserly, and the abusers--all separated by a few thin walls of chipped concrete and a rust-encrusted elevator. A creaking, straining, decrepit old elevator.