The luminescent dial of my watch has ceased to glow.  Like me, it’s been away from light too long.  The power cut off hours ago, just bam, gone, elevator dead in the air.  It was raining when I arrived, and windy, but it didn’t seem that bad.  The news always makes storms seem apocalyptic, then everybody rushes out to buy bread and bottled water.  God I wish I had some.

Maybe a whole day so far?   I can’t be sure without the watch, or the phone somewhere up on my desk.  At least this is the freight elevator.  I can lay down and I am, but sleep won’t come.  No emergency phone here.   Just buttons.

The coffee I carried was mostly empty already.  I finished it many hours ago.  Cup’s full again.  I won’t be the guy who does that on the elevator.  That’s the kind of water cooler stuff a person doesn’t live down.

And I hate this costume.  I can’t lay down in it.  Three steps back and forth, four steps back to front where my fingers scrabble for the hundredth time at the narrow slit between metal doors.   The rubber sword isn’t going in either. I pulled the Velcro on the plastic armor and I’m laying here in long johns.  It’s damned cold.

Why I just had to have the cell phone left at my work station I don’t know.  Concerns about missed messages seem incredibly stupid right now.  I certainly won’t be taking any pictures of co-workers in costume at the party.  On the other hand, two more minutes of electricity and that particular chunk of plastic could have been in my hands, ringing every number in my list.

No matter which direction I put my body on the floor, I can reach a wall with finger or toe.  I know how big this room is.  This is my daily commute in the building since my parking space is just off the warehouse side.  I’m not really a big fan of the regular elevator.

When they built this place, it seems like they were shooting for a maximum capacity of maybe four people on the elevator customers and vendors use.  Of course in the morning, people rushing to be on time push that up to seven or eight.  Not my scene at all.  Rickety.

Though I can touch the walls, I long to push them back away from me.  It’s black as sin in here, and smaller by the second.  I smell my coffee breath, reminding myself for the hundredth time that this stupid box is not some hermetically sealed specimen jar.  My stomach moans.

Since they put in the alarm and key code pad, the guard service got fired, and in this storm, no way anyone is coming to the building until eight Monday morning.  Just won’t happen.  I’m now actually fondling the St. Christopher medal hanging on my neck.  Right now, I’d travel to a war zone to leave this black hole.

First came trapping snow, closing both roads and schools.  I’m not sure about people working, shopping or any of that.  Everyone stayed in. There was fighting and boredom, books, board games and television. Feet and feet of snow, then small rain to melt things back.  The temperature dropped at dark just as quickly as the snow.

With the freezing wet, snow slid and dropped loud as thunder into great piles avalanched off a slate roof.  Some first floor windows in back allowed filtered light through the drifts and droppings next morning.

I rose early.  The yard was encrusted, glistening, sealed in the frozen remains of the night before.  Trees spouted like muddy fountains caught mid spray, the heaviest boughs brought to ground by the weight, stuck to earth in unnatural curls.

I’d beaten my siblings to the yard, the bird-less stillness broken only by grating plows scraping in the distance.  Our street was pretty deep. Nothing had  dented the surface of the little world of our driveway and yard.

Sliding slowly, skating really, I reached the plow furrow left at the roadside edge of the yard the day before.  Shallow breath pluming the air, I crossed the distance without breaking the crust.  My arms floated at my sides, balancing me, as if I were walking a tight rope.

Back at the porch door, I looked to see if there had been any spot, even small, where I’d broken the ice in my travel.  Nothing.  I’d heard creaks and groans, shifting my steps.

When the other kids came out, they stomped shapes and words into the snow and ice. They rolled in great looping arcs and up-ended sheets of ice large as they could lift, only to push them aside and scatter them to slush.

The sun warmed the earth and the icicles grew from eaves.  Within hours, our yard grew chaotic, like a dot-to-dot puzzle of a rain cloud.

More storms came as years passed in that house, but never one quite so bad.  By the next big one, I was far too heavy to leave no mark on the slick surface of the world, and too old to try.