Elias, 34

The Elevator's Secret:

The first time it happened, he was six years old, holding his mother’s hand in the mirrored lift of a hotel somewhere outside Vienna. A woman stood in the corner, her back to them, dressed in a green coat that clung to her like she was trying to disappear inside it. She was crying — not sobbing, just leaking tears silently, professionally, as if she did it often. No one said a word, yet to Elias, witnessing the woman’s sorrow was one of the most moving things he would ever experience. The elevator reached the eighth floor. The woman stepped out. Elias never saw her again.

Years later, in his thirties now, Elias thinks about her constantly. He doesn’t remember her face, only the coat, the stillness, the way her sadness had seemed to fit the size of the elevator perfectly. Neat. Contained. Like grief in a jar.

So Elias made it a habit: he only cries in elevators. Not bathrooms. Not bedrooms. Not in the car on long night drives. Only elevators. Always alone, always quiet, and only between floors.

He doesn’t cry because he’s heartbroken. Elias has never been married, never lost a parent, never known tragedy in the obvious ways. But something happens to him between floors. The moment the doors close and the world is sealed off, it hits. A wave. A trigger. Like a button he presses in his chest.

It began one day after work, standing in the lift of an office building downtown. He was holding a lukewarm cup of tea and thinking about nothing in particular when, suddenly, a single tear slipped down his cheek. Then another. He wiped them quickly before the doors opened, but the release had felt clean. Precise. Since then, it had become a habit.

He started choosing elevators carefully. Hotels, hospitals, business towers. Buildings with long travel times and very little foot traffic. He memorized their sounds, their speeds, their quirks. Some whined at the top. Some smelled faintly of rubber or mildew. Some felt warm, like they remembered people.

He began keeping a list in his phone under the title “Safe Zones.” It included floor counts, time between stops, and notes like: “mild vibration / good privacy / calming beige interior.” He couldn’t return to the same elevator too often — staff would start to recognize him. Once, at a medical center, a receptionist had smiled too warmly and said, “Back again?” He never went back.

His crying wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t noisy or indulgent. It was brief, efficient, the kind of crying you could set a watch to. Two or three minutes of slow tears, controlled breathing, shoulders still. He had a whole rotation of made-up sorrows that he summoned for each ride: the death of a beloved dog he never had, a sister who never woke from a coma, a friendship torn apart by betrayal. He gave them names, voices, entire backstories. Not because he believed them, but because they made the tears come easier. It was theatre. But the emotions felt real. Almost too real.

The best days were the ones when someone entered just as he was finishing — a stranger who might notice his red-rimmed eyes, his quiet sniffling. Once, a woman asked him softly, “Are you alright?” and he whispered “anniversary” with the kind of weight that silences further questions. She nodded, touched his arm. He exited two floors early and leaned against the hallway wall, trembling, not from sadness but from something else entirely. Addiction. That was the only word for it.

He never cried outside the elevators. Not once. He couldn’t. He tried once, in his kitchen after a lonely birthday. Nothing. Blank. But later that evening, in a grim little elevator behind a parking garage, the tears came fast, sharp, and cathartic. He pressed his forehead to the wall and whispered the name of a brother he never had.

He began to wonder: what happens if he gets stuck? What if the doors jam? What if he breaks down in a lift somewhere and they find him there, weeping over someone who never existed? Worse, what if one day he gets in and forgets how to stop? Once, he stayed inside too long — going up, then down, then back again — until the concierge knocked on the glass and asked if he was lost. He lied, said he’d dropped his phone. He hasn’t returned since.

He tells himself it’s not hurting anyone. He’s not trespassing. He’s not stealing. He’s just… borrowing the space. A borrowed stage for a performance no one pays to see. And deep down, he still thinks about the woman in the green coat. Not as a real person anymore, but as a kind of myth. A symbol. The patron saint of controlled despair. He imagines her out there somewhere, still moving between floors, still crying in elevators like it’s the only place the sadness fits.

Elias is alone, always. But in the elevator, he doesn’t feel lonely. He feels held. So he keeps going. Floor to floor. Up. Down. Perfectly calibrated. Always crying for people he never knew. And never once — not once — wondering if this was a strange thing to do.

Elias, 34