Sister-danger (by Heather)

You enter the lift with another person on the ground floor. Somewhere between the 10th and 11th floors, the lift stops and won’t move further. Tell the story of what happens, using plenty of dialogue.

If there were a god, he would not have chosen to have the lift get stuck on the exact occasion where I was alone in it with my sister.

I mean, I knew I was going to have to see her. But seeing her in a room padded with three or four lawyers while we go through mechanical details of our father’s will is a very different thing from getting stuck alone in a lift with her. I was prepared for the one but definitely not for the other.

It was bad enough that we arrived at the bank of lifts at the same time, requiring us to acknowledge each other with a brief nod of the head. But when the lift ground to a stop somewhere between the tenth and eleventh floors of the Medway Building, I could feel threads of panic gripping me. I leaned against the chrome railing, pretending to be cool while I assessed the situation. The situation was this: not only might I plunge ten floors to my death, but now I was going to have to speak to my sister, whom I hadn’t exchanged a word with in over twelve years. A camera might only have seen my sister Ellen and myself in the lift. But we could both have told you there was another passenger as well: a bag full of gremlins. History gremlins.

As I reached indecisively toward the instrument panel, words practically spat out of her mouth. “Yes, go ahead,” she growled. “Fix this if you can. You’re always the action one.”

One of the gremlins tussled inside the bag, threatening to escape.
I glanced at her. She glowered at me in a way I remembered well.

He who stays out of the battle wins, is my life strategy, so I searched for something neutral to say in reply. Out of my mouth came: “And you’re still the same sarcastic bitch, aren’t you?”

Whoops. So much for life strategies.

She turned fully toward me. “Well, I guess that justifies jumping into bed with my husband, doesn’t it?”

And there we were, three sentences into it after twelve years of silence. The gremlins spilled out of the bag and littered the floor.

It must be something about being locked in a small space together that has you get very quickly to the core issues. Or it might just be that you’re thinking about that hundred foot drop and knowing you may not have to face the consequences of anything you say.

Either way, this time I didn’t bother searching for something neutral. “It was just once, for chrissakes, you grudge-carrying bitch. Just one drunken night. I’m SORRY. I was sorry then, I’ve been sorry ever since, I’m sorry now,” I shouted, my voice escalating out of control. “I’ve never been so sorry about anything. What do you want me to say?!”

Her anger sprayed all over me. “THAT’S what I wanted you to say, and you never did. You made excuses, you blamed him, you even blamed me. I mean, you even blamed mother’s parenting, for god’s sake…but you never once said you were sorry.”

“Well, I’m saying it now!” I shrilled. I was aware that I sounded like one of those sirens whooping at a factory, but considerably less musical.

“I hear you, I hear you,” she shouted back. “You don’t actually need to shout. This is an eight foot square room, there are no machinery noises and I can hear you.”

I looked at her. Her face was beet red, tendons were standing out in her neck, her mouth was twisted and ugly. I saw myself in the mirror panel. Face red, neck tendons standing out, mouth twisted and ugly. You’ve never seen anything less attractive, and, well, funny. A hiccup escaped my unruly body. I couldn’t tell what was coming out next, but it turned out to be an explosive laugh.

“I’m sorry,” I coughed, holding my sides while I doubled over with laughter. “It’s not funny, well, it IS funny, but…I’m sorry, I can’t stop.” The more I tried to suppress the laughter, the stranger the sobbing wail that came out of me.

I knew Ellen would kill me but I was beyond caring. She bent over, winding up to punch me one, and that struck me as funnier yet. And then a wild sound escaped HER lips and I realised to my astonishment that she was laughing as well. She reached toward me for support, unable to hold herself up any longer, and next thing I knew we were in each other’s arms, laughing uncontrollably (or was it crying?), and pounding each other’s backs (or was it trying to kill each other?). She smacked my shoulder with her handbag, causing her makeup and things to fall out all over the floor, and we screamed with laughter again. I yanked the scarf from my neck and swung it at her, succeeding in striking only myself. More howls of laughter.

I slid down the wall of the lift to the floor, holding my sides. I couldn’t breathe. There she was sitting right beside me, tears streaming down her face.

“I destroyed your marriage,” I said, stifling a sob and feeling dizzy with the admission.

Beside me, Ellen snorted through her shrieks of laughter. “You were such a jerk. HE was such a jerk. Having the excuse to leave him was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life.”

She pummelled hysterically on the wall, and I couldn’t help joining her. Then suddenly we remembered our predicament and grabbed each other instead.


Well, that’s the end of the story of Ellen and me in the lift. You’ll be wondering if the lift got unstuck or not, and if we survived to tell the story. I know you: you’re addicted to adventure-danger and you’ll be half hoping the cable breaks and we’re swinging there helplessly in the lift-well, still in gales of laughter.

But the story really isn’t about stuck lifts so I’m not going to tell you. It’s not about that kind of adventure-danger at all. It’s a story about sister-danger. And how you can truly risk losing everything.