The Elevator Operator in the Haas-Haus

The Elevator Operator in the Haas-Haus

The brass lever is always cold, filmed with a faint metallic sweat that feels like a ghost’s palm. My name is Mira. I am twenty-six, and I am the only person in this glass-and-steel building who knows that the elevator has a pulse.

Hans Hollein built the Haas-Haus to argue with St. Stephen’s Cathedral across the square. A jagged mirror confronting Gothic stone. But the architects forgot about the shaft. Or perhaps they simply chose not to look too closely.

It is 2:14 a.m. The Stephansplatz is a void of damp cobblestones and indifferent statues. Inside the glass cage the light is a sickly gilded amber that makes my skin look like old paper. I push the lever forward. The elevator begins its ascent with a low, mechanical B-flat that vibrates through the soles of my shoes.

The buttons are suggestions. I have learned to read the machine’s moods by the way the floor numbers shudder as we pass them. Last Tuesday I held the lever between floors. The elevator tilted, a slow, nauseating lean, as if the entire building were adjusting its spine to better accommodate me.

Tonight the car is quiet. Too quiet. I stop at the fifth floor, but I do not open the doors. I keep the lever in the dead zone. The cables scream in a register only the house and I can hear.

In the mirrored wall I see myself at the lever. But behind my shoulder stands another Mira — uniform pristine, hair in a knot I stopped wearing three years ago. She is studying the back of my neck with clinical curiosity.

I do not turn around. Turning around would mean acknowledging that the space inside this elevator is no longer bound by normal geometry.

The lift shudders. A violent metallic clack runs down the shaft. Suddenly I am back at the ground floor, though I never moved the lever. The doors open.

A man is standing there. Heavy dark wool coat, briefcase humming with the same B-flat frequency as the cables. He steps in and stands far too close. His skin radiates no heat.

“Going up?” I ask.

“I am going home,” he replies.

We rise. As we pass the fourth floor the lights die. In the total darkness I hear hundreds of people whispering at once — every shopper, every thief, every lost soul who has ever leaned their forehead against this glass. The elevator is digesting its history, and it is hungry for a new entry.

My hand passes through the wall. It feels like plunging into cold running water. I pull back, gasping. The lights return.

The man is gone.

On the floor where he stood lies a small brass button — identical to the ones on my panel, but unmarked. It is warm.

I pick it up. For a fraction of a second I see the Haas-Haus from the outside, but it is not a building. It is a vast white ribcage arching over the city, and I am the small frantic thing trapped inside its chest.

I look at the button in my palm. It has no floor number. It is simply waiting.

I am twenty-six. I have a mother who worries, a cat that expects breakfast, and a lease due on the first. I stare at the button, my thumb hovering above it.

The elevator hums with desperate, metallic urgency.

I push the lever forward instead. I do not press the button. Not yet.

I look at the glass and see that the reflection of the building behind me is beginning to dissolve into stars — or into the hollow dark of a space where no one, not even the city, ever bothers to look.

I think I will stay here a while longer. The pay is terrible, but the company is becoming quite singular.