Mime.
Don't look.
It's been fifteen years. Fifteen years of therapy. Both physical and psychiatric. They said I was the only one in that elevator. They had me convinced for fifteen years. They said I pushed the emergency stop of the elevator. Now, I know otherwise. They said I threw myself through the anterior of the glass elevator. It wasn't me.
It did it. The mime.
The mime, it was next to me. I could feel it. I didn't have to see it. I couldn't look. That's how it happened last time. I looked.
I looked at it, and it looked into me. The old saying "the abyss stares back" or some such thing. That was what it was like. Then I was lost. I woke up in the hospital. They said it was a suicide attempt. They said I lost my mind. That wasn't all I lost. Career. Family. Life. I missed fifteen years of the world. Three presidents had come and gone while I was rehabilitating my body and mind, some of it strapped in to the white coat in the padded quarter of the hospital I was interred.
But I was free again. Free to live, to pursue a normal life again, to dream, to achieve, to succeed. Until this moment.
It was here, with me, again. Another glass elevator. A different hotel. Another late night. Its presence greeted me with sheer terror. I knew how high the elevator was this time. This time, I wouldn't survive. Just. Don't. Look.
I could feel it imploring me to gaze upon it. Craving me to turn my eyes toward its androgynous form. I knew if I did it would be the last thing I ever saw; so briefly, before the abyss engulfed me.
I began to shake, wondering how long I could keep my gaze from it, how long would it be before another guest pushed a button? How long could I wait for hotel personnel to unfreeze the elevator and and force it to its destination? I knew it had only been mere minutes, seconds even, and I could already feel the weight, the demand, the obligation that I look upon the mime.
The mime. I remember very little about what it looked like, other than it didn't seem to be male or female. It didn't seem to be a spirit, ghost, demon, alien, animal, mineral, or vegetable. It just was. And I could feel it moving around the elevator. It was pantomiming whatever was going to happen if I looked. I didn't have to see it to know. I didn't have to look to be horrified.
The shaking became worse still, I gripped the rail and closed my eyes to avoid falling and perchance catching a flash of its visage, even possibly in my periphery. Was I breathing? Had I been breathing? My heart's roaring was so deafening I couldn't hear if I had been. It didn't feel like I had been. I couldn't tell.
There it was. The urge. The irresistible appetite. I didn't know if I could fight it any longer. The pressure in the ornate glass elevator was beyond what I could bear. My senses were devastated, I didn't know if I was even still standing. I didn't know if I was breathing. I didn't know if I was even still alive.
But then I did it. I opened my eyes.