The Elevator That Only Goes to Memories

Jared had no reason to enter the abandoned apartment building on 43rd Street. It had stood like a crooked skeleton against the city skyline for years — condemned, forgotten, the kind of place even graffiti gave up on. But something drew him in that night. Maybe it was the dream he kept having: the flicker of elevator lights, the hiss of cables, the whisper of something he couldn’t remember.

Inside, the air was thick with dust and silence. The once-golden lobby tiles were cracked like old skin. A broken chandelier swung gently, though there was no breeze. Jared’s flashlight flickered as he approached the elevator at the far end — an old brass cage with an ornate call button that didn’t belong in a building this modest.

The button glowed softly.

That was the first impossibility.

He pressed it.

The gate groaned open with a wheeze like a dying breath. The inside smelled like metal, flowers, and rain — oddly fresh, impossibly clean. Above the panel were buttons numbered from -3 to 12, but no ground floor. The moment he stepped inside, the elevator jolted and began to rise without a button being pushed.

Ding. Floor -1.

The doors opened to a memory.

It was his seventh birthday. A backyard. His father — before the heart attack, before the silence — holding a homemade cake shaped like a dinosaur. Jared watched his younger self laugh, frosting on his nose, surrounded by faces he’d long forgotten. He didn’t remember this party. Not the colors, not the weather, not even the dinosaur. But it was real.

The elevator waited. He stepped back in.

Ding. Floor 2.

His college dorm room. The night he decided not to call Eliza back. She had cried in a voicemail. He had never listened to the end. Now, standing there, he heard it. "I just wanted you to know I still believe in you, even if you don’t believe in us."

He swallowed hard.

Each floor brought a memory — not all were happy. Some were sharp, painful. The night his mother packed a suitcase with shaking hands. The first time he lied to get a job. The day he walked past a homeless veteran without stopping. Jared didn’t just watch; he felt them again. Smells. Words. Regret.

But the elevator never let him off. He could only see.

Then came Floor 9.

This wasn’t a memory.

The room was unfamiliar — a café with faded green booths and jazz playing low. Jared walked among the scene like a ghost. A woman sat across from him. Or rather, someone who looked like him. Same eyes, same scar on the chin — but this version smiled differently. Looser. Happier.

They held hands.

Jared had never seen this woman before. He would’ve remembered her — the orange scarf, the laugh that made the glass ripple. They talked about a child. A boy. Their boy.

The scene changed. A living room. A Christmas tree. Jared — the other Jared — lifting a sleepy toddler into his arms. The woman kissed his cheek.

This wasn’t his life.

He staggered back into the elevator as the lights dimmed.

Ding. Floor 11.

A hospital room. His mother, older, dying. He wasn’t there. She held a photo of a child — not him. The man from the café stood by her side.

This was a life lived parallel. A version of him who had chosen Eliza. Who had taken a different job. Who had said yes instead of no. Who had become someone better, softer.

And then came Floor 13.

No button for it. No ding. But the elevator opened anyway.

Nothing but a mirror.

Jared stood there, alone, looking at himself. The real one. The one who had walked away from love. Who buried his grief in work. Who forgot the smell of rain.

In the silence, the mirror cracked.

A voice — his own — whispered:

"Now you remember. But what will you do?"

The elevator jolted.

He was outside again. Morning sun rising over 43rd Street. The building was gone.

Not abandoned.

Gone.

Jared stood there for a long time, hand on the warm concrete where the door had been. He didn’t know if it had been real. But something in his chest ached like truth.

He pulled out his phone and found Eliza’s number.

Still saved.

He hesitated, thumb hovering.

Then he pressed Call.