A Night To Remember novel (Diane and Norman) novel Chapter 14

Chapter 14 A Fright in the Elevator

The entire day passed by without a hitch, but as Diane was about to get off work, Stella came over and slammed a pile of documents onto her desk.

“I’ll be needing these tomorrow morning, so stay back tonight and take care of it,” said Stella bossily as she acted all business-like. Diane knew that Stella was deliberately pushing her around, but it was difficult to say no under such circumstances—she was using work as an excuse, and it sounded quite logical as well.

“Well then, happy working! I’m leaving. Norman booked us a table at a new Japanese restaurant tonight to celebrate my promotion; he’ll be arriving soon, so you should go back to work. I’ll leave you to it.”

She held her handbag in one hand and sauntered away as she swayed her hips pompously—her waist was no longer as slim as it was before.

Meanwhile, Diane aggressively flipped open the topmost file on the stack of documents as she willed herself to swallow her anger. After that, time passed by steadily as she worked on the pile of papers; she only finished arranging all the documents and hit ‘send’ on her email at 10.00PM. Then, she shut down the computer at once.

The building had been empty since hours ago; even though the lights were still on in the office, she couldn’t help but feel afraid since she was alone. Diane sprinted to the elevator as quickly as possible and noticed a sign propped up in front of it—it turned out that one of the elevators was on maintenance. Nonetheless, she didn’t think much of it and pressed the button on the unit that was working. Before long, the cabin arrived at her floor.

The metal doors closed as soon as she stepped inside. After she selected the ground floor, it started moving right away.

After a long day, she leaned against the wall of the elevator in relief. Before she could settle down, though, the cabin jolted all of a sudden. Diane was taken by surprise and her heart jumped in horror. She was still stunned when something even scarier happened the next second—the doors opened abruptly to the dark elevator shaft.

“Ah…”

The elevator was still descending even with its doors open. Diane was utterly horrified; she stared wide-eyed into the abyss, her hands holding tight onto the handlebar behind her.

The following 10 seconds or so were crazy, for the doors opened and closed continuously without warning. Not only that, the elevator was shaking non-stop as well. Diane closed her eyes in terror and screamed at the top of her lungs, whereas her legs were limp like jelly as she stood there. Just then, the elevator came to a sudden halt and she fell on her butt after losing her balance.

She didn’t know where she was anymore—the doors were now closed and all the buttons were lit up on the panel. Obviously, the elevator had broken down.

The surroundings soon quietened down; after a long time, Diane finally stood up shakily as she supported herself by clinging onto the handlebar. She looked at the control panel and tried to call for help using the emergency button but to no avail. In the end, she could only take out her phone.

This number… She couldn’t recall who it was; she was in a rush to call the police, so she declined the call without a second thought.