KATE ANSELL

‘Fire! Fire! or, Ascension’

I WAS EATING MUSTARD OUT OF A JAR with a spoon when I got your email, Bruce. The one inviting me to fire safety training tomorrow. No, sorry, I can’t attend. The reasons include that it’s a pointless box ticking exercise and I have a life to live, work to do, and sex to have. A corporate lunch, lamb chops with mash potatoes, and no, it’s not as good as it sounds. Plus a management meeting at 11am, some paperwork, and three tedious conversations with jaded suppliers before that. Also, I suggested four days last month I could’ve attended the training and you ignored that entirely and then assumed I would be available at your behest this week and that, Bruce, is disrespectful of my work and my life and my body.

Oh you missed the email. Pay attention, Bruce. Do better.

I know they pay you by the Zoom call, Bruce. On every one of them, I’ve noticed how tendrils of aspidistra spin off your mantelpiece, growing longer by the hour. One of them’s trailing into your fish tank, did you know that? And once, just once, you left your underwear drying on the radiator, but I was too kind to tell you. Is your wife upstairs naked during these calls, Bruce? I don’t mean to intrude on your life, but you do intrude so carelessly on mine. Once I noticed a pair of stilettos in the hallway, when you left your office door open.

My eyesight is very good, Bruce.

Anyway, you know every detail of every spasm I’ve ever had, every antidepressant I’ve taken, my office hours, my date of birth, my GP’s maiden name, not that you understand the implications, just that you like it all for your records. If I told you I controlled my pain by biting an inch off the top of my thumb every Thursday morning, you’d believe me. Or that I use my top left incisor tooth to puncture the neck of my ex-boyfriend and suck out three drops of his blood to rejuvenate me. It’s the iron, Bruce. He works out.

The thing about fire safety is that I’m quite safe already. It’s true I have a spinal abnormality and it’s true I’d take longer to get out of the building than most mere mortals, but I know how unfit some of them are, I know how loud they have their headphones, how many bags of crisps they eat daily, and let’s just say I don’t think I’d be last, exactly. But somehow I’m where you focus all your energy. Rules and regulations, eh?

That’s the title of a song.

The other reason I’m not available for fire safety training, Bruce, is that I’m also stuck in a lift. Technically, Bruce, I think it’s your fault. It’s OK because I’m working out an escape plan. I’ll remove the roof of the lift capsule with my bare hands and climb the wall like a monkey scaling a palm tree and I’ll poke my head through the hatch like a triumphant sprite who doesn’t know what’s good for it.

Am I mixing my metaphors, Bruce? Sorry. I quite like it in the lift, tho.

I do.

It’s very peaceful here. I did press the alarm button. I waited. There were a few flashes, some crackles. A buzz. Of course it was stupid of me to assume anyone would come and help. Thursday night after seven pm, and no one here works in the building on Friday, they don’t even bother doing a lunch service in the canteen, not that anyone eats it when there is one. But I digress. Thursday night is not a priority for the business, neither is maintaining the lifts nor, as I recently found out, the lift alarm systems.

Oh well. You know why I was here late, Bruce? Because I’d been composing my resignation email. Because ithad always been my plan to get the fuck out of here. As I say, I’m very good at finding escape routes.

Do you water your aspidistra on the daily, Bruce? I’m not sure how these things work. I think they’re quite difficult to kill. That’s the impression I get.

Don’t worry about me in here, Bruce. In my handbag I have a bag of slightly crushed mini cheddars and a bashed kiwi. At first I was afraid of being here alone and then I thought well, what’s the worst that could happen?It’s me and a fly and a dead bee in a metal box and my head gets so busy: job tasks and home tasks and maths about paying my credit card bill. Will I get sacked before Iresign? Am I going to get cancer? When’s my mother going to die? All those things.

Well, if I’m stuck in a lift, Bruce, maybe I won’t need to worry about any of that for a few hours. Maybe I’ll just worry about how to get out.

So I sat down, my arse on cold metal, my knees pulled up against my stomach. I wished I’d worn thicker tights, but I wasn’t to know. At least my knickers were substantial. Plus, my tube skirt was a good choice for lift entrapment. Red polyester is very durable. My head was empty. The floor was solid. I pressed my hands down and imprinted myself in the dust. I noticed things. Someone had dropped a cigarette end, someone had dropped a sweetwrapper. That dead bee, again. We had cleaners. I swear, we had cleaners, but no one really gave a shit about the lift,I know that now. I traced my finger around a muddy footprint. Maybe someone went for a walk in the park at lunchtime. It was nice to think of people taking walks. I was pleased with my manicure, too. Orange shellac. It’s important to have joy in your life. Some dust did get under my fingernails, I’m sure it did, but you can’t really tell with the shellac.

It’s fine to be a bit slovenly, no one knows.

I have plans for after I resign, Bruce. They go: I’ll bolt out of the door, catch a bus to the nearest train station, and take whichever train to wherever it’ll take me. I’m hoping Whitstable, by the sea. It’s posh and expensive and I can’t really afford to go there, especially not if I quit my job, but I’ve been told there are nice shops and a good pub on the beach, and you can eat lobster. I’d love that. Love it. I don’t even know what lobster tastes like but it must taste happy. Lobsters look like happy creatures, they look like they’re doing what they want to be doing, swimming in the sea, apart from the ones in tanks at restaurants. That’s why I’ve never eaten one, frankly. But I’d like to eat an ocean lobster. I’d absorb their joy.

It’s the red shell and the tentacles and the intricate claws. They’re having the best time. I’d drink a glass of champagne, too.

I know the train might not take me to Whitstable. I mean, I might end up in Slough, which is fine by the way. People take the mickey but it’s just offices and a roundabout and there’s nice Indian restaurants if you look for them. The thing is, Bruce, it wouldn’t be about where I ended up, it’d be about no one being able to stop me. No one, even if they wanted to.

I mean.

Feel free to do a risk assessment, Bruce.

But right now, Bruce, I’m not in Whitstable or Slough or even Lanzarote, I’m in your lift. Slow hand clap. I admit, I was scared for a bit, that cold dread that trickles down your throat and lands in your stomach, the acid that rides up again. I’m not denying that, but now I’m quite comfortable with the situation. I’ve written my resignation email in my head at least five times in the last hour and I’m very happy with it. As happy as a lobster, as they say. The last hour? I’ve actually no idea what the time is, I’ve stopped my watch and turned off my phone, there’s no reception here and time is irrelevant and I’ll only panic about it. You wouldn’t want me to panic, would you, Bruce? Not in a confined space.

Escape, then. First, I stretched a bit. With my back, stretching’s very good for me. If I’m going to get out, Bruce, I best be lithe and nimble. It seemed like a good time to take my over the counter pain medication and no, I didn’t have any water, and I did dry swallow, even tho the internet says that’s inadvisable. There’s no internet in a broken lift, Bruce. If there was, I’d google how long a human can survive without water, it seems relevant in my current situation. The people who write that shit on the internet have never relied on pills the way I do, have they? Sometimes you have to improvise, don’t you? It’s a skill that’s come in handy tonight.

So yes, I took a few medications, and I stood with my back as straight as I could against one of the walls. There’s a muscle, it always gets stuck, and no, I can’t remember what it’s called, it’s something to do with the trapezius, which is my favourite, just because it’s triangular and sounds like a circus act. Anyway, I stretched, something moved. Oh! The relief of it! I reached right over the other side of the lift and I touched the opposite wall, like Mrs Spaghetti Arms, which is what a bossy flute teacher called me when I was nine. If you check the lift later, Bruce, and you might want to, you’ll find my fingerprint there, quite high up.

Evidence, Bruce.

By now, I was feeling both superhuman and peckish and I remembered the kiwi. It’s got juice in it, Bruce and, as we’ve discussed, I’ll need hydration if I’m going to survive. You know the kiwi was bruised but honestly I didn’t care, it sort of added to its attraction, me and the kiwi, casualties of the universe, together in this failure of a lift. I took the emergency knife and fork out of my bag. They’ve been there for about a month, since the day I bought a salad in the canteen and never ate it.

I sliced the kiwi into two. The skin collapsed beneath my thumb and forefinger, mushy. I did appreciate the way the white core and glossy black seeds contrasted with the green flesh. I shovelled a blob in my mouth and swallowed. It was all bruise and no flavour, pungent like a bowl of cornflakes left out in the sun. I stuffed the rest in whole, the skin bitter and fuzzy on my tongue, the flesh oozing, the seeds caught between my teeth, spasms in my throat as I swallowed, like a snake, supple and alert, basking in the glory of survival.

The fly was unexpected. What can I say, Bruce? Its wings beat against the roof of my mouth. It tickled the hollow of my cheek. When I sucked, the taste of violet petals. And when it somersaulted down my gullet, I let out a tiny shriek. I can still hear it buzzing in my stomach, probably will until the day I die. No regrets. I’d swallow a boiled egg whole if I had one. A mouse. A frog. An elephant.

Well.

I didn’t have any of those, Bruce.

I was in a lift. Unwillingly.

Earlier, I’d tried to open the doors with my bare hands, I even inserted a plastic ruler between the tiny gap where they sealed shut, but it wasn’t budging, the ruler snapped, of course it did. You’re not supposed to be able to open liftdoors on a whim, Bruce, you know that. I didn’t need one of your diagrams to know the only way out was through the hatch.

There was a hatch. What I could see from where I was standing — because I was standing up now, Bruce, you can’t sit down on this job — what I could see was a shiny metal ceiling, rectangular, fitted with six spotlights, of which onlyfour were working. You know that, don’t you Bruce? It’ll be on a repairs spreadsheet somewhere. Anyway I was pretty sure that with the right technique you could remove the ceiling panel and then there’d be a hatch leading to the lift shaft. That’s what I’d expect. Like this:

That sound you just heard, that was the fly beating its wings against my stomach wall. It’s reassuring until it gets too fast, but a little nervous energy is inevitable in this situation, wouldn’t you say? I did need to take a few deep breaths and a spoonful of Gaviscon. I counted backwards from one hundred, like when we played hide and seek at school. One hundred, all the way down.

Three. Two. One. Coming …

… Ready or not, Bruce.

I scaled that lift wall, hands pressed in the top corners, feet dangling beneath me, and no, I don’t know how I could suddenly do this, I don’t know how I could scale a shiny lift wall with just my hands. It did take effort. Truthfully, I thought the tendons in my wrist were about to snap, my hips were popping out of their sockets, I was breaking out in cold sweat. My arms felt heavy, like I was holding up the whole building, like I was balancing the earth itself on the tips of my fingers.

Somehow I was.

You know what it reminded me of? Those stretchy rubber sticky men that cling to the window if you throw themhard enough. I used to get those in my Christmas stocking, Bruce. Did you? My mum would confiscate it by the end of Boxing Day because I was crying and fighting with my brother and because it left marks on the wall and we couldn’t afford to have the lounge repainted, we weren’t made of money, Bruce.

My hips. My wrists. My heart. I fell.

It was fine, Bruce. I landed with a thump, arse against metal, that polyester skirt doing some heroic cushioning, I felt the fly cartwheel in my stomach, I lay flat on my back and counted my vertebrae, noting where it was sore, wheremy body twisted naturally, the places where the physios paid attention. My body, Bruce. I’m so grateful for my body. C3. T7. L4.

It hurt, of course. Always. 

#

I rested.

#

The bee, Bruce. When I opened my eyes, and who knows when that was, I don’t, the bee lay in the palm of my hand, one leg missing, antennae akimbo, corbiculae swollen, pollen bursting from its hindquarters, the smell of fresh air and decay. When I licked it, and I did, what I tasted was stinging nettles and rancid apples and cow’s blood andbitters and bliss. My eyes rolled. Briefly, I saw god. And the bee moved, just ever so slightly, venom searching for target, body willing itself to live, this crumpled insect writhing in my fist, its five eyes staring into my soul.

I knew, Bruce.

Exhausted, I shoved the whole thing in my mouth, stinger at my throat and it was… acrid, like the desert. I bit down hard and swallowed, and the lift was bathed in light, and heat rose from the pit of my stomach into my heart, into my skull.

I scaled the wall again, one foot at a time, t-shirt clinging to my back, wet with sweat, hands burning like I’d dipped them in boiling water, soul screaming, feet slipping. Every time I lifted one leg up, the opposite foot lost its grip. My fingers were bent all the way backward, swollen and throbbing, orange nails shining. When I tore away the ceiling panel, my fingertips ripped wide open, blood running down my hands and arms, dripping onto the floor. I took a deep breath and counted to five before breathing out again, once, twice, three times.

The hatch came open with one almighty shove. I pulled myself through the clouds of dust and confused bats. What I could smell was bonfires and dead mice and discarded personnel files and the sweat of a man on a Zoom call who hadn’t left the house or changed his underwear in three days, whose wife lay upstairs in bed, repulsed.

This, this was the lift shaft.

My arms ached, my legs were heavy. I was so tired, Bruce. I had had exactly enough.

I breathed.

I waited.

There was brick dust in my hair. I licked blood off my wrists. I could hear the world outside: police sirens, dogs, runners. Distantly, a nightclub, its baseline pumping exactly in rhythm with my heart, which raced like a startled tiger. I knew too well its come-hither signage: two-for-one cocktails, a pitcher of margarita, six beers in a bucket. My workmates and me, we’d never set foot inside, not even when we were out for good time, especially not then. You knew the floors were sticky. Of course you did, in a place like that. I tried to make out the lyric. There was no lyric.

So now I stood on top of the lift car, which was itself suspended by chains in mid-air. I took those chains in my burning hands, and I rocked them, and the lift rocked with me, surprisingly soothing, surprisingly gentle. And I danced, Bruce, atop my lift, I danced, shoulders shoulders hips hips, the lift swaying beneath me. I tapped out my own music in the pitch dark. Why wouldn’t I dance?

I didn’t know how I was going to get out of there. 

#

Time passed, I assume.

Eventually, there was light, a single beam from somewhere high above me, the tantalising suggestion of freedom. When I looked up, the back of my neck cracked, exactly where it met my skull. Now I could smell autumn and tequila. I stretched again, my shoulders aching, my bloodied neon fingertips reaching for the outer limits of the tunnel. What I thought I could see was the bottom rung of a ladder, welded to the wall, leading upward, leading away,

Of course I grabbed it with both hands and pulled myself up, lacerated fingers stinging, chest stretching, acid burning the back of my throat, legs dangling, me pumping them like I was riding a bicycle, not that I could ride a bicycle. I swallowed a handful of drugs, and retched. Oh god, I retched, and when I screamed it bounced off the wallsand landed back in my throat and the bats stirred and the crows cried.

One rung, two, three, four, until I secured my feet on the lowest rung. My arms stretched so high I thought my stomach would rip in two. The DJ’s impossible baseline vibrated outside the walls and rang inside my head like a military tattoo.

Whoever designed this ladder had longer legs than me. I took it rung by rung, hand hand foot foot, beat by beat,and it took fucking forever, that’s how long it took, me and my broken body on this impossible escape ladder, panting like a horse, sweating like a prince, my hair clinging to the back of my neck, my toes clawing. I could smell myself, yesterday’s piss and ink stains and blood and fear. And when my foot slipped from the ladder, which of course it did, many times, I just swung there like a condemned man, remembering the lobster dinner, waiting to see what would happen next, whether my body would give way and my fingers would uncurl and I’d fall, fall, fall.

#

I could barely feel my fingertips when they touched the metal trapdoor, which I knew was an illusion, but which opened with one final full-bodied push. And the light streamed in and I cried.

And I waited. Because.

Because outside.

Because all the things: my credit card bill, my mother, my resignation email, my physio appointments, my bleeding fingertips, my empty bank account, my soul. The toad in the hole I’d planned to cook for dinner; the takeaway pizza I couldn’t afford; the next job I hadn’t found; my love of bottled water and the forward march of climate change; the disappointment of my one bedroom flat and the glory of staying in bed after midday on a weekday; the positive HPV test in five years time; the friends who would betray me; the elderly rescue cat I’ll adopt next spring who’ll escape over the garden fence and get hit by my neighbour’s car; the funerals I have to go to and the ones I don’t go to. Because.

I pushed open the hatch again and I lifted my head and I blinked into the light. I took in the sky, the keow-keow of a passing seagull. I scrambled onto the roof, scraping my knees and the palms of my hands, bare metal and bird shit and mud. Phone masts and satellite dishes bounced invisible messages over my head, into the universe, and back again. Me atop an office roof. A discarded crisp packet and a deflated balloon. I peered over the edge and sawthe world unfolding without me: the cleaners arriving for work, the drunkards leaving the club, the underpaid bar worker mopping other people’s vomit off the pavement. It didn’t occur to anyone to look up and see me, it didn’t occur to anyone I’d be here. I could taste the blood in my mouth, I could feel the bruise on my elbow, my fingers still bleeding. I lay on my back, starfished, breathing in, breathing out, letting the world envelop me.