Just your regular Friday.
Trapped in a poorly lit elevator
with three other strangers.

The only things they have in common are that
they’re all wearing red shoes,
and that they’re all going up.
Everyone is listening to their own music -
a weird mix of
rap, rock, indie and folk
that sounds great played in the same time.

No one knows where they’ll get off the elevator,
at what storey, nor if they’ll take a left or right afterwards.
It’s all a mystery.

The first couple of floors pass easily,
maybe someone even cracks a joke
or makes a funny comment
and they all smile at their mirror reflection.

Suddenly, the elevator clutches between floors
and they get to see their faces for the first time.
They are mesmerized.
Although they have nothing in common besides the red shoes,
They feel as if they are doppelgangers on the inside;

They wake up in each-other’s heads
and it all feels comfortable for a while,
The chairs are cosy and the food is great!

The mirrors disappear and they start to see the world from above.
they realise that there’s no insurance,
and that they’re suspended in mid-air,
half way between the earth and the sky,
a band of unknown,
4 complete strangers,
everyone trying to act cool,
posing for an imaginary sub-genre cover album photo,
that no one will get to listen to.

Minutes pass and they become hours,
sky becomes sea
and clouds vanish.
They get tired of looking out the window
and all the windows look tired of looking out of them.

Someone finds a door and opens it.
He looks at the others, waves, then jumps.
They’ll never know if he drowned,
got burned in the atmosphere or
ended up on the good side
of the freshly buttered toast.


One of the remaining three starts taking selfies,
Smiling at his virtual image,
not being bothered at all
that the image doesn’t smile back,
being convinced that, in this way,
he’s slowly becoming part of a special form of theatre,
with a smiling/sad face construction,
a bipolar bear with
the heart of an eagle.

The second one starts writing nervously on the walls;
endless lines of pathetic reality;
a combination of feelings, lies,
email passwords,
social media security questions
and lots and lots of sophistry…
everything intended to serve as a rock-solid personal legacy
after the elevator’s presumed crash.

The third one gets locked in his own head,
carefully observing all of them,
gazing in the blank,
with his headphones still in his ears,
but with no music on,
no plan in his mind,
no clean underwear,
no purpose at the end of the journey,
no solution,
no answer for any of the police’s questions,
trapped in an elevator
like a great idea in somebody’s head,
in a brain crack situation.

He is all alone,
humming sad chick tunes,
slowly losing his wit and grit.

The elevator walls reappear,
and he is now going up again,
by himself,
slowly,
surrounded by three pairs of red shoes
that were made for walking,
but are now
floating around the universe,
half-way between God and Darwin.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ypofGDdHpo