The Box

The Box

My name is Elias and I’m twenty years old in community college ready to attend my four-year college. My goal is to play for the Cal football team. I already went and tried out but didn’t make the team. I was the best player at Berkeley High School and received multiple offers from different colleges. I even received one from Cal, but for some reason they wouldn’t accept me during tryouts. I’ve been thinking if I should just give up on football and focus on my entrepreneurship major.

A couple weeks ago I decided to sign up for an entrepreneurship internship that pays really well. The internship was there to teach us young people how entrepreneurship really works and how it could be a big benefit in life. This internship took place at the Salesforce tower in San Francisco. At first I thought I wasn’t going to get in due to my immaturity and poor credit ratings, but I was wrong. I ended up getting a call from a business man named Mr. Queens. From what I learned, Mr. Queens was a professional businessman who gave people beneficial impacts about their money. I was hoping to be one of those people.

Since I got the internship I decided to throw a little kickback party at my house to celebrate that I’ve been accepted. All my friends and family came over and we had beers and Chinese food. I didn’t plan on it, but I ended up getting a little too drunk. The next day, the day of the internship, I woke up super late and a nasty groggy feeling occurred in me. I hated this feeling, everything could’ve been so much different last night. As I was speeding through the glass spinning doors, I accidentally shoved a random man and knocked all his papers down.

“Sorryyyy!!! I have to go, watch your surroundings though,” I shouted as I was running away.

It was a stupid thing to say but it was the only thing that came to my head during the rush. The man didn’t do anything but stare hard. I made my way toward the elevators and I noticed that there is a mechanical department working on the elevator generators. I quickly asked them how long it was going to take. I got an answer of 45 minutes. Obviously I couldn’t make that, so I decided to take the stairs.

The internship was on the fifty-sixth floor of the building, I ran up all of the fifty-six flights of stairs. Due to my athleticism, I was able to get there in a reasonable time. As I walked into the interview room looking around to see who was in it, I noticed that the man whose papers I knocked down was Mr. Queens. He stared at me and gave me a weird welcome.

Everyone was still introducing themselves to each other, so I had time to settle in at my seat. I didn’t want to have a weird relationship with Mr. Queens, so I decided to apologize to him. I walked over, introduced myself, then apologized and told him why I was being so rude when I knocked his papers down. Mr. Queens gave me a big ol’ side eye, then accepted my apology. From the way I was dressed compared to others, I looked like a bum. Everyone had nice high-end business suits with ties. The internship took at least three hours everyday with no breaks or lunches. After the internship, I was slumped out on the table with my head down. Mr. Queens came by and tapped my shoulder.

“You awake, son?” He questioned.

“Yeah, I’m awake, sorry I fell asleep,” I responded.

“You’re good, just go check the classroom website and you’ll see the information you missed,” he said.

“Alright,” I sighed.

As I was walking out of the room making my way towards the elevator, I felt my stomach start to rumble. I was starving; I could literally eat a whole cow. When I’m hungry, I have no energy to move around normally. I pressed the button to the elevator and waited patiently for it to come up. Since of how long it was taking I was just about getting ready to take the stairs back down. I began to walk off and as I was walking, the elevator doors opened.

Ding ding.

I made my way through the doors and stood in the elevator leaned up against the wall. The elevator was going down and it was moving quicker than it usually does. Due to how tired I was, I had no concern about why it was moving so much faster than how it used to. I guess maybe because the mechanical department was working on it.

All of a sudden as I was going down, the elevator jerked hard and came to a complete stop. I thought it was time to get off, so I accidentally walked into the door, slamming my head into it. I was really confused about what was happening; I didn't know what to do. I tried button jamming the elevator door buttons, I tried to wave my hands across the sensor for the automatic doors, I even tried to open the doors.

I had my phone on me, but it had a low battery and only one bar of service. It was midday at 1:30 pm. Everyone who worked in the building stays in the building till 8:30 pm. I was hoping that the elevator would become unstuck or someone presses the button and I come down. I wasn’t really scared or stressed out about this situation yet because it’s only been about 10 minutes since it stopped. I was so chill about the situation I ended up taking a nap on the floor. I woke up to look at my phone and it’s 7:39 pm. I jumped up so fast and started to panic. I was running around in circles repeating the same words over and over.

“HELPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP I’M STUCK, CAN SOMEBODY HELPPPPP MEEEEE!!!”

I got no response nor movement of the elevator. I finally got on my phone to make a few emergency phone calls. I called my mom, my dad, my sister, and my friends. Nobody’s call went through. Finally, one of the people I attempted to call called me back. It was a random homework helper I had from high school. Anyway, she called back and her name was Stella. Stella was one of my good friends from highschool who helped me get through school. I told Stella the situation I was in and I think she understood exactly what’s happening and how much panic I could be in. I told Stella everything, but as soon as I dropped the location of where I was, my phone died. I wasn’t sure if she was able to hear that I was at the Salesforce tower but I did know that she knew that I was in San Francisco stuck in an elevator. I hoped she put a word out to the police because if she didn’t I might starve out and die. I might be over exaggerating, but that’s how I felt in this situation right now.

I sat down again and began to pray, since that was the only option I had. I have never prayed before, but this was the first time. I sat on my knees, crossed my arms, and closed my eyes. During this time I grabbed my two pointer fingers, licked them, then touched my right shoulder, left shoulder, chest, and forehead. As I was praying, I was looking directly at the elevator doors and how big the gap was between them.

At this time, I had no other choice but to break my phone and make it as flat as possible to slide in between the doors. I began to stomp, step and smash my phone all over the place. Once it was flat enough, I jammed the phone between the doors and got it stuck between them. When I got the phone stuck, I used it as a lever to try and make the doors open. The doors opened a little bit to where I was able to stick my fingers between them and try to pry them open myself.

As I was struggling to open the doors with my hands, I started to feel a little dizzy and overworked. My body began to feel heavy and sweaty.

SLAM! My body abruptly hit the ground hard.

It turned out that I had passed out.

As I was passed out on the floor of the elevator, I had a dream. The dream was about a little boy who tries to chase a light. The light is moving further away, but only because he is growing and has more challenges to accept. The boy has had struggles all throughout life and this light is the only opening to a good life he has never ever had before. So he continues to chase that light.

Boom, I woke up. The most energetic feeling had kicked in and was coursing through my veins. I continued to use my phone and fingertips to even nudge open the door. As the door was slowly opening there was a little white light on the bottom half of the elevator doors. The little white light gave me motivation to keep going. I kept tugging and tugging on the doors and they were opening as I went, but the energy of my body started to drain again. I slowly got a dizzy feeling the second time, I used my last option to get it open as I could. I used my feet and it worked. The doors had a big gap for me, I slowly slid myself through the doors and fell on a regular floor level.

I was knocked out again. This time when I woke up there were people above my head with bright lights blinding my pupils strapping me up in a stretcher. It turned out I broke my right shoulder the way I landed on it. The bones are a bit disjointed, but it’ll be okay. I was back in my head and from this entire experience I realized I didn’t want to be this person anymore, I wanted to push myself in my football career and see where it takes me.