I shuffled my feet. Normally I would have been embarrassed by the high platform boots my wife gave me for my birthday, but I didn’t care what I looked like in that moment. I was pissed thinking about a work project that was late because my client couldn’t decide what she wanted when the elevator stopped moving.
“Shit shit shit,” I began repetitively smashing the ground floor button, but the elevator wouldn’t budge. I looked around at the two other people in the elevator. They both looked worriedly at me and then each other. I pressed the emergency button and a few seconds later muffled noises starting coming from the crude speaker on the wall.
“Hello, can you hear us?” I cried into the little holes punched through the sheet metal where the speaker seemed to be.
“MmmMm mmMm mmm” was all that came out of the speaker.
“Hello? Hello?” I yelled. There was only static from the other end, and then a loud beep. After that the static stopped, and the speaker never made another sound. A little cloud of smoke wafted out from behind the control panel. I began to panic.
It was a hot day, and the elevator didn’t seem to have any sort of temperature control system. Soon it felt like I was boiling in my own personal claustrophobic hell. “We’ve got to get out of here.” I said.
None of the ceiling panels budged. I began pushing on the side panels, hoping to find a loose one that I could slip through. Surprisingly, the third one I checked fell right out of place with almost no effort.
“Guys, we can get out through here!” I said and turned to look at my fellow strandees, but they didn’t look too hot. Or, rather, they looked *too* hot. They were both slumped against the wall and flush in the face. I decided it was better to look quickly for help, on my own.
I pushed myself through the small opening. Past the opening was a narrow corridor barely larger than my body, and I had to shimmy like a snake in order to move through it which was made extra difficult due to the stupid platform shoes. It took close to thirty minutes to move four feet, then another half hour to crawl six more before my hands met a second metal panel. I pushed that one, which after a little resistance also gave way, and what I saw shocked me.
It was a staircase. *Perfect.* I thought I had found the stairs that would take me down to the ground floor. Except something was…wrong. We were stuck at around the fifth floor, but the staircase was only one flight and at the bottom there was a door.
And unlike the building’s normal staircase, this one lacked the carpet and brightly painted drywall. In their place was dark, cold concrete. The walls, the steps, the ceiling, everything was the same dark-colored concrete. There were no connecting flights of stairs. It was just the one, which ran from the panel behind the elevator to a closed door. I stared down at the door in morbid curiosity.
Something about it repulsed me, as though I could sense that behind that door troubled awaited me. However, I was trapped and had no other options for freedom. I descended the concrete steps, and as I approached the door at the bottom it suddenly crept open.
*Krrrrrrr*, the hinge squeaked as the door opened about five inches, as if beckoning me to open in further. Behind it was only blackness, and I couldn’t hear anyone on the other side. But someone must have opened the door, right?
“Hello?” I shouted into the dark space. No response came, and so I gulped down my nerves, pushed the door open with one hand, and stepped into the dark. Something wet dripped onto my ear.
“Gross,” I muttered, not giving it too much thought. Behind the door were more stairs that led to a lower, even darker space. I couldn’t see past the fourth or fifth step, beyond that was a sea of black.
“Hellooo!” I called out again, and again there was nothing. *Wait, what was that?*
Far into the room, I thought I heard someone…whisper.
“Anyone there?” I yelled again. I reached the last step, but paused before descending any more. What if there was something malicious waiting for me within that room? But I quickly talked myself into a sense of security. It was my work building, the same building I had been visiting daily for the past 20 years. I made my way down into the room, following the wall like a tour guide.
However, at a certain point the wall seemed to disappear behind me, leaving me stranded and untethered in a sea of shadows. I took one blind step forward, then took another. My steps echoed off the crisp, hard concrete into the vast open space around me.
“Hello?” I called out, my feeble voice trembled slightly. The air down there felt heavier. There was a an ominous and foreboding energy that crackled with every movement I made, as if some colossal danger was waiting in the dark for me.
“I’m here!” Someone cried out from the dark. My heart sped into overdrive and I turned in the direction the voice came from.
“Who’s there?” I said, in barely more than a whisper. I squinted, trying to make out any details about my surroundings. The longer I stayed down there in the dark, the more my eyes grew accustomed to the light. I could just barely see some rough outlines now. There seemed to be two thick ropes hanging from the wall, and something in between them.
“Please help me.” The person mustered. It made the blood in my veins go ice cold. I squinted harder at the thing in front of me, and my vision began to process the scene. The thick ropes I had seen were his arms, hanging from metal clasps in the wall above his head. His posture was overly hunched, giving the impression that he had been chained up for a long time already. His limbs were thin and gangly, he tried to stand when I spoke to him but only stumbled a little.
“What can I do?” I asked hesitantly.
“They won’t be back for the rest of the day. I know where the key is, please. I just need to get out of here.” From what I could tell he had a long grayish beard, and his narrow face caved in below the cheek bones like he was starving to death. I felt empathy towards him, tortured and alone, but I was scared to get involved. What if the people who did this to him came back, what if they came after me?
“Why are you down here?” I asked the man. He responded dryly.
“I used to work here. I had a mid-level position in the graphic design department, and I went through a period with some tough clients where I started missing deadlines. My manager said corporate was upset with my performance, that I needed to step up to the challenge. I tried harder, but my stupid clients wouldn’t communicate with me! Then, one day I was working late and…” He trailed off.
“What?” I asked him earnestly. His story was starting to sound unsettlingly familiar. He grunted.
“I was in the- uh, well, they got me. I don’t remember exactly how, only that I passed out and woke up down here.” He stuttered nervously.
“What do they do with you?” I spoke, and the fear in my voice was palpable. The man laughed.
“As you know, the agency serves lots of different clients, with different kinds of…needs. Let’s just say not all of them are looking for graphic design logos. Some of the higher-paying clients want experiences that are hard to get without winding up in jail. So they higher the agency to find people they can use to get off, the way they want to.” He trailed off again.
“Tell me what they do to you.” I needed to know the truth. He stared at me silently for a moment, then dropped his head. He bit down onto the fabric of his t-shirt, then yanked it up with his head to reveal his bare stomach. The flesh was riddled with large scabbed wounds, fresh blood, and deep scars. It was clear that he was being chronically tortured.
The blood drained from my head. I bent over for stability and vomited. It was the most awful thing I have ever seen, and I’ve been a Redditor since high school.
“They react like that sometimes, the softer ones. At least at first. By the third or fourth, they’re usually as desensitized as the rest. Others come in here and you can just tell that they’ve done similar stuff to other people, out in the real world.” He coughed and hacked up something wet.
“We need to get out of here.” I said between heavy breaths. “I need to get out of here. Where’s the key?”
“It’s in that cabinet against the wall,” the captive man said as he motioned with his head. There was a cabinet right in front of him on the opposite wall. I ran over to it and, luckily, it was unlocked. From behind my back, the man muttered instructions.
“It should be hanging on a hook on the back board.”
“Holy shit!” I exclaimed upon seeing the contents of the cabinet. It was a vast assortment of vile instruments, supposedly for the “clients” to use on the man chained up behind me. The objects ranged from ball gags and vibrators to chain whips, bowie knives, fire pokers and branding irons. I tentatively stuck my hand past them towards the backboard and began blindly searching for the key.
“You know, I’m really lucky you were working late.” The man said behind me as I fumbled around frantically feeling for the hook. “They made me an offer recently, a way to earn my freedom…” I started pulling out lingerie costumes, only half listening to him. “It was something really awful, and I told them I wouldn’t do it. But you know how it is, you get desensitized to these things, and then the deal starts to sound more appealing.” I started wildly running my hands along every inch of the back and sides of the cabinet, knocking spiked anal plugs and metal-barbed dildos to the floor. “And to think, all because you missed a few deadlines.”
“I found the hook!” I shouted behind me, “But there’s no k-,” I stopped mid-sentence. Behind me, I heard metal hinges clicking open. “I didn’t say anything about missed deadlines.” I turned around and the man was standing right behind me, his eyes wide and mouth gaping on his sunken, malnourished face. One arm was raised in the air, in his hand a crooked metal shank.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered and brought the shank down on top of me. I grabbed his arm, but the force knocked me to the floor. He jumped on top of me, put one arm around me neck and pushed the shank down with the other. I was still holding his arm in the air, but only about six inches from my head. I pushed up with all my might, but he was incredibly strong for a starving prisoner, and the shank slowly inched closer to my face.
“Stop, stop, please don’t do this.” I said, gritting my teeth. “We- *guh*- can *erg* escape!” I squeezed out between grunts. The man laughed.
“You idiot, they’re watching us right now. This is my only way out!” He pushed the shank down towards my eye, brushing against my eye. I arched my back from the pain, tossing his body off mine, and used the opportunity to wriggle out of his chokehold and pick up a fire poker. I got to my knees and before the man could get up I plunged it down with all my force into his stomach. He laughed, “That’s not even the worst I’ve had today,” and got to his feet with the fire poker still stuck in his belly, but by that time I had run off into the darkness towards the door.
“There’s nowhere to hide! You may be blind down here, but I can see you!” He yelled. I ran without any idea where the stairs were. My eyes were more accustom to the dark than when I arrived, but I was moving too fast to make out even any basic shapes. Suddenly my foot hit the bottom stair and I crashed face first into the staircase. I felt a *crack* in my nose and it immediately began to sting, but there was no time to wallow in pain. The other man sounded closer behind now. I got to my feet and charged blindly up the stairs until I reached the door.
It was locked. I felt around for a door handle but there it was missing.
“Oh Jesus,” I whispered. It sounded like the man had reached the bottom of the stairs.
“You fucking idiot, did you really think they’d leave the door open for us?” He wheezed between words and hocked up wet clots of what I assumed was blood when he was done. I slammed my shoulder as hard as I could into the door. It budged a little but didn’t open. Thankfully my pursuer was moving slower now. I kicked the door, and it budged a little more.
“Now you know what it feels like to be stuck down here in the dark, fearing for your life.” He was halfway up. I kicked and kicked the door. The wood cracked a little. “Thankfully, you’re here to take my place.” I closed my eyes, sucked in a deep breath and shoved as hard as possible. My shoulder went crashing through the doorway. “Hey, stop! You weren’t supposed to do that!” The man shouted, but I was not going to wait around for him to catch up.
I sprinted as fast as I could up the next set of stairs. Now all I had to do was make it through the little tunnel to the elevator shaft. I reached the mouth of the tunnel and foolishly took one last look behind me. In the low light, I saw the man scrambling up the stairs on all fours like a humanoid spider, blood and mushy flesh pouring from his abdomen and cascading down the steps in a waterfall of carnage. I knew it was too late, but I stuck my head through the tunnel and started shimmying for my life anyway. I don’t know how, but my feet were deep inside the tunnel before he reached me. I thought I was in the clear when I felt something pierce the bottom of my left foot.
The other man had stuck the barbed hook of a fire poker through my shoe into my flesh. I thrashed and kicked but the barb was in deep, there was no use. My hands grasped hopelessly at the smooth tunnel walls as he reeled me back out like a starving fisherman. He laughed as he pulled me in.
“You’re coming back with me, you little bitch!” He spewed with rage. “I’ll cut you worse than they cut me!” As my feet slid back out of the tunnel again, I knew it was all over. I started to give my final wishes to the universe before my imminent death;
*Let my wife find peace after I am dead. Take care of her like she tried so hard to take care of me-*
That’s when I remembered something. I was wearing the stupid shoes with the thick heels my wife had given me. I started kicking at my left shoe like crazy, hoping that the barb hadn’t made it through the rubber.
“What the hell,” the man guffawed.
The left shoe flew off. My feet slipped into the tunnel again, free of any restraint. The barb hadn’t made it into my flesh! I scrambled with a newfound courage until I found the hole leading to the elevator shaft. Luckily the elevator was still there. I wriggled my body forward until I had my arms through, then pulled myself the rest of the way. The other two people who were there before had disappeared, but I didn’t stop to think about it then.
“You dirty fucking cunt, I’ll kill you!” The man screamed behind me. He was thin and made it through much faster than I did. I barely had time to put the metal panel back up against the mouth of the tunnel before he reached it. He punched the metal, but I pushed it with all my weight and it held. Then the fire poker came through.
“Shit!” I gasped. It passed between my arms. Luckily it didn’t hit me. I heard more laughter from within the tunnel. Then the poker came through right between my fingers. I instinctually fell away from the panel, and the man must have felt me leave because he immediately began crawling out through the hole, jabbing the air with the poker the whole time.
“Now you’re dead,” he said and I believed him. However, the universe had other plans.
In that very moment, the elevator started to go down. “No!” he shouted as he scrambled forward. He got half his body out by the time the mouth of the tunnel began to disappear, but it was obvious he wasn’t going to make it. With rage and frustration in his eyes, he changed directions last minute and began crawling away. His forehead disappeared into the tunnel right as the elevator closed off the opening. From inside I could hear him howling and pounding the metal with rage.
“Don’t leave me here! Please! Come back!” His muffled voice came from above. Then there was silence.
He was gone.
I started laughing my ass off. I was safe! A few seconds later, I began to cry. I was *safe*! I was going to see my wife that night. When the elevator reached the ground floor, the doors opened. Outside, a woman with a corporate-looking pantsuit reached out a hand.
“Congratulations, you made it.” I stared at her a while before accepting her help onto my feet. “We think you have great potential, and would love to discuss future opportunities for you at the agency.” That’s all she said. I had half a mind to cuss her out, but I was grateful just to be alive. The agency was obviously much more powerful than I realized, and if they were impressed with my effort I wanted to keep it that way.
Once home, I told my wife that a homeless man punched me in the nose and stole my shoes, and that I had hurt my foot walking back barefoot. She was a little confused but didn’t question it any further. There was an email waiting for me when I got home, inviting me to apply for a new position at the agency: “Assistant Manager of Breakout Strategy”. I couldn’t help but feel flattered. Basically the job is to run away from elite clients who pay to hunt human targets. If I do well, I become the trainer for new “huntees”. The salary is way more than I make now, plus great medical and dental benefits.
I’m writing my story because I don’t know if I should apply. Is it stupid to walk away from good money? Or is it stupid to risk my life for a medical plan? There’s one thing they left out of the job description that I’d really like to know; how good are the hunters?