The Fourth Floor That Isn't There

I have worked in the same seven-storey office building for four years. Marketing is on three, accounting on four. The elevator takes about four seconds between floors; everyone who works here has that rhythm in their bones.

In November I rode up alone from the lobby, pressed four, and the elevator stopped one beat too early. The doors opened onto a floor I had never seen. Same carpet pattern as ours but in green, a reception desk with a switched-on lamp, rows of monitors glowing behind frosted glass, and that white-noise hum of a working office. No people anywhere in sight, though every desk looked ten seconds abandoned: chairs half-turned, a jacket over one armrest, a screensaver blooming and dying on the nearest monitor. The indicator above the door showed nothing at all — not three, not four, just an unlit panel.

I did not step out. I want to say it was good instincts but honestly my legs simply refused. The doors closed on their own and delivered me to four, which took — I checked my phone timer out of some reflex — eleven seconds instead of four.

I told exactly one colleague, Priya, and she laughed at me until January, when it happened to her with a variation: her phone showed No Service the entire time the doors stood open, then reconnected the moment they closed.

We went to building management together, feeling ridiculous. The manager pulled out the riser diagram without a word, like he had done it before, and I remember the paper shaking slightly in his hands. Between the third and fourth slabs there is a service void, one metre twenty high. Ductwork and cable trays. You cannot stand up in it, let alone furnish it.

The elevator was inspected in December. No faults found. I still ride it every day, and every day between three and four I watch the doors, half hoping, half not.