The Basement

The Basement

The world is like a tall building. One layer atop another. There are no stairs, but there is a single elevator that sits in an empty marble tiled lobby. The majority of people live on the first few floors. They go about their lives oblivious to the basement. They know there are a select few that live in the penthouses above them. They break their backs trying to work their way into one of the penthouses. The people that live in the penthouses are vaguely aware of the basement and the people who reside there. They see the basement dwellers as poor creatures who need to be helped, but they never venture into the hellish depths of the basement.
The people in the basement are evil creatures who feed on each other. They were born in its' acrid oily depths, and for them the only way to get to the penthouse is to kill its' owner and take it. These loathsome creatures live on a diet of drugs and alcohol. Occasionally they will persuade the youth of the people on the other floors to meet them in the lobby. They will introduce these young people to a life of mind altering substances and crime, then drag them back to the basement where they will remain. Sometimes they make it back to the floors they came from long enough to eat and steal from the people that care about them. The people who toil in their back breaking jobs. The parents hearts break as they watch their children self destruct and die.
There are a few of us who have a key to the elevator that grants us access from the top to the bottom. The elevator, it sometimes seems, is the only thing in the building that isn't broken. I imagine it's that way because it is a heartless piece of machinery who's only purpose in existing is to transport people.
I have gone from the first floor to the penthouse when I am called to do so. As you ride the elevator you can hear the whining of the pulleys and the steady drone of its mechanical engine. Most of the time it is drowned out by the silent screams and shattering of lives as it passes between floors.
As I traverse the levels going up I am certain of only one thing. Whoever I talk to and whatever their situation I will find the solution by going into the basement.
After a while you get to know the basement down to its every darkened corner. You know its inhabitants by name and you know where they hide. I know that every trip to the basement brings resolution to someone. I know that to protect the rest of the people in the building you often have to remove the dangerous creature from the sub-level, taking them out of the building entirely and locking them in a cage.
Some of us die in the basement while trying to help the people in the building, but when one is killed thirty more go down and light the whole place up. After we get our man, we will grieve, at least, until we to succumb to the basement.