Jasmine — The Elevator Stopped on a Floor That Didn’t Exist

I was alone in my office tower long after midnight. Every desk lamp was on, but my coworkers had vanished. When I entered the elevator, its panel showed a button marked 0 even though the lobby was Floor 1. I pressed 1. The elevator ignored me and began descending while a recorded voice congratulated me on my promotion.

The doors opened onto an office identical to mine. Every desk was occupied by a sleeping version of one of my coworkers. At my desk sat an older woman who looked exactly like me. She was finishing an endless stack of documents stamped ‘Approved by the person you replaced.’ Each time she signed a page, another appeared beneath it.

I asked whom I had replaced. She pointed to a wall of employee portraits. Every photograph showed me wearing a different title, but the dates overlapped. In the final frame, my nameplate was blank and someone had written, ‘She became indispensable, so she was never allowed to leave.’

The elevator doors began closing. Inside stood my manager holding a box of my belongings. He said, ‘You finally reached the floor you have been working toward. Why are you trying to go home?’ I stepped inside, but every button had disappeared except 0. Behind us, all the sleeping coworkers opened their eyes at once and asked me to cover their shifts.

The older Jasmine slipped one unfinished document through the narrowing doors. It was a resignation letter addressed to my younger self. At the bottom were two signature lines: one for the person I wanted to impress and one for the person I was becoming. I woke before signing either, with the elevator’s congratulatory voice repeating in my head.