old metal box

At this month's start, I moved in to a different apartment. Yes, my roomie and I have divorced (it was amicable, needless to say). I stopped counting the number of times I had gone up and down the elevator in the process of carting my stuff from the 8th floor down to the 2nd floor. It was a good thing that my cousin has a flatbed cart that eased the weight (literally) of relocating. In two years here, I am amazed at how much stuff I had accumulated (now I ponder on how to ship all these back home). The all metal freight elevator I was using is decidedly dated. There were some scratches on the wall, indelible marks left by previous building occupants who have done much the same as I am. On my umpteenth trip, there was a couple already in the elevator who came from the ground floor. I recognized them. They had moved in across the hall to my soon to be old apartment. As the elevator slowly rose, all our heads were heavenwards it seemed, looking at the floor numbers as they lit up. Why do we that? I was thinking this when I saw the number 7 dim and expectantly waited for 8. Instead, we all heard an awful mechanical groaning. Uh-oh. The elevator stopped. Not quite at the 8th but past the 7th. We were stuck. The three of us looked at each other. For a moment there I felt panic that the cables holding the elevator up would snap and we would free-fall. Yikes! Snap out of it. The guy called building security and we were told it would take a couple of minutes. I felt claustrophobic. To ease the nerves, my companions and I made small talk. Oohh...you're from Spain. I am from the Philippines (you colonized us for 300 years..) And then an uncomfortable silence. Just to do something, I tried to pry open the elevator door. It was heavy but then the other girl helped me and we were able to crank it open. Girl power!! Freedom!! The elevator was not quite level with our floor and we half crawled our way out. I was glad to be out of the musty smell of the old metal box. I had never felt so happy to smell Indian curry that one of the neighbors was cooking. It was still fresh air to me.