A Dream

There was a crowd in front of the elevators. I had to watch two elevators leave before getting on the third with a few other riders. I hit the bottom for the fourth floor. The interior was all brass and gleaming with a golden shine, and surprisingly spacious. I thought I had stepped into a glamorous Hollywood movie elevator from the 1940s. With a slight shudder, the elevator began to accelerate.

From windows on three sides of the elevator I could see the ground receding rapidly under us. The elevator was attached to and ascended along the external wall of the building. It never stopped for the fourth floor or any other floor. I began to feel dizzy. Eventually the building wall curved and the elevator moved laterally. We stood with our backs pressed against the wall and stared at the cloudless blue sky rising in front of us.

Suddenly a boom approached from somewhere under our feet and grew louder. A plane with a smooth pointy nose barged into the view, its body and wings gleaming with metallic silver gray in the sunlight. It flew so close to the elevator that I thought it was about to crash into us and crush everyone inside, but it barely scraped the glass window we were facing.

I was staring at the belly of the plane right above when the wings suddenly retracted and wrapped around its body. I wanted to raise my hands and cover my faces before it was to crash into the elevator, but the long, round, wingless tube continued to glide gracefully over us and toward the edge of the building and disappeared.