By Elyse Merlo

It all started late one night at Little Stevie’s. I had just gotten a crappy housing lottery number and was eating away my feelings with some friends when, suddenly, I was asked to be the fourth roommate for an off-campus apartment.

Now that I have been living in the apartment for a little over a month, I realize there are things I did not take into account when moving from dorms to an actual apartment.

Like the fact that I am now terrified of elevators.

At first I was psyched, after living on the top floor of a dorm without an elevator last year, I thought that being able to ride an elevator to the fifth floor every day was the epitome of luxury. But then the nightmares started.

I have them weekly and it is always the same. I get into the elevator, the door closes but the elevator won’t move. No matter what I do I am trapped in this stationary box that won’t let me out and refuses to take me to my destination. It is not until I am about to wake up in a hysterical panic that I realize I forgot to press the button for my floor.

It’s ridiculous, it’s stupid, and actually, it’s pretty funny, but I wake up in a sweat every time I have it.

After that, I began to notice all the things that are wrong with my building’s elevators. Sometimes the wiring panel is opened just enough to invite that one idiot to see what happens if he cut the red wire. The lights on the buttons and displays regularly don’t light up and there is always some sort of sound that makes me think of the opening scene of “Speed.”

Why not just take the stairs? I don’t know where they are. I’m sure somewhere in my building there is a staircase. It can’t be legal to not have stairs but if there are any in existence, nobody ever told me about them. So there is no option; it’s the sketchy elevator or bust.

Next to the elevator, there is the amazingly roundabout way we have to do laundry.