I am not an avid fiction reader. The world of fantasy falls flat on my senses, and I do not travel to escape. Despite me being criminally unemotional to my travel life (much of which gets translated into my current profession) I am probably building a fantasy that might give you, my readers, a portal to escape.
If you were an Enid Blyton fan in childhood and wished if you could someday find the enchanted wood or if you still believe in Narnia, here's a fantasy that would probably land you somewhere you haven't heard about.
Through The Elevator Door
What if your building elevator opened into an unheard place, every time you took it?
It's a Sunday morning, you need to take the elevator to collect your mails from the reception downstairs. You enter the lift and press the basement button. In a few seconds, the door opens.
But where are you?
You find yourself at the edge of a rocky cliff shrouded in clouds. You can't gauge how deep the drop is. But at the moment, your body feels a rush of adrenaline while your mind has an unprecedented feeling of agoraphobia. It takes you a few minutes to stop questioning yourself and let the sense of adventure overpower everything else. You shout out your name loudly. There's no echo. There is no stone wall ahead or around, you are here, above everything else, even your thoughts.
In a few more minutes, the lift appears. You can see two buttons. One reads 'Home', the other one, your current location:
1. Réunion Island
You press home, hoping to return here someday later.
You now know that your lift is magical. A voice in your head says that you shouldn't tell anybody else, that would be crazy. What if you were just daydreaming, what if the magic disappears if it's shared, what if it would even work the next time?
That entire day you visit the lift quite often, But the lift seems to have lost the magic. Alas, you go to sleep. The next day, you have to run some errands, you enter the lift, and exit only to this view:
At first sight, it seems like you are on an island, but as you walk around, you realize that the ocean lies on both sides of you. You keep walking around, it seems like a circular island, but no! There's a part of the ocean inside this ring-shaped island. As you walk around, this atoll, the residents look at you in surprise. Have they never seen a tourist, you wonder? As you step into the shallow beaches, the elevator appears again. You check for the name, it reads:
2. Funafuti Atoll, Tuvalu
It's time to go back home, but you have kind of figured out when the elevator works. You wonder where it would take you the next time. You wait until next morning to get surprised once again. And here you are:
I know this place, you think. It must be Turkey. But is it? You are surprised that there is no one around. You have all the terraces for yourself. The water is blue but golden too and at places red as well. As far as you can see are barren hills and civilization at the base assuring that you haven't come to another planet. It's therapeutic to sit here and watch the first ray of sun peek through the clouds. On your way back to the elevator, you read the name:
3. Badab-E-Soort, Iran
Confident about the elevator, you have plans for the next day. What if you could carry a camera along or if you could take a friend too. You plan it well. You won't tell your bestie what has been happening, rather you would just show it to her. You call her home early in the morning the next day. She is here and has called you downstairs. She has got her hands full and needs your help. You try to reach her through the elevator but that's not how the elevator has been operating. Instead, you end up being here:
From 'what would be my friend doing' to 'what are these things', the questions in your mind change rapidly. Thousands of specks shining like stars in a cave. Your feet are wet, but the blue luminescence keeps you held. Eerie, yet spectacular! You wish your friend could be here with you to see this. You have a wild thought of carving your name here. But you brush the thought aside, for you belong to this place, not the other way round.
The elevator appears at the end of the tunnel. It reads:
4. Glowworm Caves, New Zealand
It's time to hit reality, you end up on your floor through the elevator. You rush to your flat to check your phone. Your friend is waiting at the doorstep.
"Dude, I have been pressing your doorbell and calling you for the last fifteen minutes. First, you made me wait downstairs for such a long time, and now at the door. Where were you? And where is your phone? I was almost going to call the guards thinking something happened to you. Anyway, see how many succulents I have got for you! The poor presswallah helped me bring them upstairs."
"Come inside, I will tell you the whole story." You reply.
As you narrate the incident to your friend, she thinks that you are playing a prank on her. You ask her to come the next day herself, preferably by stairs. The whole night is spent in suspicion and anticipation.
You have charged your camera and your phone to full, your friend is here, you are in the elevator, you press the button for the basement. The elevator opens to this view:
"I thought you were kidding me! What is happening! Where are we? Is this Northern Lights? She is gasping for a breath.
"Seems like it!"
"Let's take a picture." I hope it doesn't disappear like a ghost later. Dude, why is there no snow here? Is Arctic circle free of snow at some time of the year?"
"We will find out in some time. But before that let's take as many pictures."
"Look, the elevator is back. We will find out the place."
It says:
5. Aurora Australis, Tasmania, Australia
Your friend suggests that you should do this more often. And that's the plan, next day she is back to go on another adventure with you. And here you are:
The view is breathless; you still breathing. Have I got gills, you wonder.
You swim around like mermaids, in silence. Fishes come by and go, contrasting against the deep blue sea. Drenched in water, your camera is gone, so has your phone. But you don't care about them anymore. The silence makes you feel alive. Until now you had been at those places but nothing brought you as close to this one where you could feel every moment.
The elevator reads:
6. Sainte-Marguerite Island, France
You buy new phones and decide that it is pointless to carry them with you. It's better not to try documenting things, unless you want to run a deep hole into your pockets. The next morning, the elevator opens here:
"Seems like Europe!"
"Yeah, but I didn't expect tin roofs in Europe."
As you walk down the street, you realize that it's not Europe. People look Asian but you can't understand what they speak. As they get suspicious of you, you decide to keep away from the village and enjoy the views of the enchanting woods you have found yourself. The amber hues spread as far as the horizon.
"Feels like poetry..."
"...that has acquired a physical form."
The elevator reads:
7. Hemu Village, Xinjiang, China
You wished that you could just go on and on, visiting places after places. And with that wish, you were ready to take the elevator again. But your friend's phone rings. There are some common friends here.
"What have you guys been up to lately? She sent me the pictures from Tasmania. I don't believe that you guys can visit places through an elevator. I had to see it so I came."
"with three more people?"
"Sorry, I sent a message to some of my friends too. Didn't invite them, but they came here."
As soon as the door of the elevator was about to close, a hand stopped it.
"Hey heard about the elevator, can you open a portal for us?"
As three more people join in, the elevator closes. But no sooner, an emergency overload siren comes up. Someone has to exit. But who?
while some were trying to figure that out, someone exclaimed:
"The elevator door isn't opening. We are stuck."
It took an hour for the security to get the elevator fixed.
"We will try it tomorrow." The friends said and left.
The next day you didn't take any calls from your friends; asked the building guard to stop any visitors at the basement until you came to meet them downstairs.
You take the elevator. It opens to this view:
You try the elevator everyday. Hoping that someday it might take you somewhere else. Probably it will.
But you do know something for sure now: