The Static Between Floors

The eleventh floor of the Meridian Tower had always unsettled me, even before I understood why. I worked in customer service, but my office was on the ninth, and the elevator bank was a constant reminder of the floors I was never supposed to visit. The building was a marvel of glass and steel, but it had a secret—a floor that didn’t exist on any directory, yet appeared on the maintenance schematics as a void.

It was a Friday, and the clock read 8:32 PM. My shift had ended but I lingered, half-heartedly checking my inbox, when my colleague, Priti, burst into the break room with a grin. ‘You won’t believe what I found,’ she said, brandishing a tattered keycard. ‘This was in the lost and found. It’s for the eleventh floor.’

I shook my head. ‘You know the rules. No one goes up there.’

‘Come on, Mira. You’ve worked here three years and you’ve never wondered? Just a quick peek, then we leave. I promise.’

Against my better judgment, I followed her and two others—Dev and Salim—to the elevator. The car smelled of stale cigarettes and ozone. Priti swiped the card, and the button for 11 lit up. The elevator shuddered and began to climb.

The doors opened onto a corridor that was darker than the rest of the building. The lights flickered, buzzing with an electronic hum. The air was cold, but not the crisp cold of air conditioning—it was the damp cold of a cellar. The walls were bare concrete, not the sleek panels of the lower floors. We stepped out, and the elevator doors slid shut behind us, sealing us in.

‘It’s just an abandoned floor,’ Dev said, but his voice lacked conviction.

We wandered down the corridor, past doorways that opened into empty rooms crammed with overturned desks and broken chairs. Dust motes danced in the dim light, and the only sound was the endless hum of the ventilation. Then, from the end of the hall, came a soft click—the sound of a door closing.

We froze. ‘That was probably just the AC,’ Salim whispered.

But Priti’s face had gone pale. ‘I heard something else,’ she said. ‘A voice. It was whispering my name.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Dev said, but he was gripping the edge of a desk.

We moved deeper, our footsteps echoing. We reached the reception area of the floor, a wide space with a long desk and a wall of mail slots. On the desk sat a single phone, its receiver dangling, the dial tone playing a broken melody. Then, the lights flickered and went out. We heard a gasp, and when the lights flickered back, Priti was pointing at the production area—a glass-walled room beyond the reception.

‘There!’ she shouted, her voice shrill. ‘There’s a woman in white!’

We turned, but we saw nothing—just shadows and the reflection of our own terrified faces in the dark glass. But Priti was sweating, her breath quickening. ‘She’s standing there, watching us. She’s smiling.’

‘There’s nothing there, Priti,’ I said, but my heart was pounding.

She began to tremble. ‘She’s pointing at you, Mira.’

I spun around, my skin crawling, but still, I saw nothing. And then the phone on the desk rang. A sharp, piercing ring that cut through the hum. We all stared at it. On the fourth ring, I picked up the receiver.

Static. And through the white noise, a voice—faint but clear—said, ‘You should not have come.’

The line went dead. I dropped the receiver as if it were a burning coal.

Dev grabbed my arm. ‘We need to get out of here. Now.’

We rushed back to the elevator, but the button for floor 9 was unresponsive. The elevator didn’t move. The lights above the doors flickered, and the car shuddered. The doors slid open again onto the same corridor, but now the corridor looked different—the walls were covered in scorch marks, and the air reeked of burnt plastic.

‘We’re going in circles,’ Salim said.

We tried again, but the same thing happened. The elevator would open on the same floor, and we would step out, and find our way back. Each time, the floor seemed different, but the same phone would ring, and a different voice would speak. ‘You’re trapped.’ ‘This is your home now.’ ‘They all forget.’

We were lost for what felt like hours. The clock on my phone was spinning, the numbers blurring. Then, the elevator door opened to reveal a break room—a familiar break room, with our mugs and notes on the whiteboard. It was the ninth floor. But there was a catch.

When we stumbled out, the elevator doors closed, and we were back on an ordinary floor. We breathed a sigh of relief, but we didn’t realize we had changed. We went to our desks, sat down, and resumed our work as if nothing had happened. But we never spoke of the eleventh floor again.

A week later, I noticed a pattern. Every time I entered an elevator, I would press the button for 9, but the car would sometimes stop on 11 first. The doors would open, and I would see the production area, with figures standing motionless. And then the doors would close, and I would be on 9 as if nothing was wrong.

I began to see them everywhere—the woman in white, standing at the edge of my vision. She would disappear when I turned to face her, but I knew she was always there, waiting. One night, I stayed late, and I saw Priti walk to the elevator. She pressed the up button, and the doors opened. She stepped in, and the doors closed.

I called out to her, but she didn’t respond. I pressed the call button, but the elevator didn’t budge. It only displayed a single digit: 11.

I ran to the stairs, found them locked. And then, from above, I heard a muffled scream—Priti’s scream, cut short. The lights flickered, and the building went silent.

I never told anyone what happened that night. But now, whenever I pass the elevator banks, I see the doors slide open for a split second, revealing an empty hallway. And sometimes, when the static of a phone call fills my ear, I hear a voice that sounds like mine, saying, ‘You should not have come.’

I don’t know if we ever left the eleventh floor. Perhaps we are still there, trapped in a loop, doomed to repeat the same moment for eternity. The elevator doors open, and we step out, and the phone rings, and the woman in white points her finger at us, and we cannot look away.

And the worst part? No one else can see her. But I can. I always can.