Elevator, pt 2

As promised, the long-awaited ending to Elevator!

Except this doesn't take place in an elevator as much. Oh well, at least we find out what HWA stands for.

Marcella shook her head in confusion. She really did hope she was dreaming, because she was now looking at a man in a zoot suit and another man in what she was pretty sure was mid-1800s garb having a conversation about that copy machine that didn't work anymore, and they should really get a new one. And now the doors had opened again, and a woman stepped in, dressed for the eighteenth century. Her huge skirt barely fit through the door.. The 1800s man greeted her with a "Good day, Miss Howard!" and she nodded kindly in response. 

"Please let me off," Marcella whispered. She had been smashed against the back wall by the woman's ornate  mint-green skirt. Light glistened off the thin gold thread that ran up and down, and when the woman shifted to face Marcella, the modern-dressed woman could see copious lace on the front. 

"Pardon?"

"Please let me off the elevator. Please."

Marcella was feeling extremely claustrophobic at the moment, and she was sure that if she didn't get off the elevator soon she would pass out. 

"Oh, of course."

The woman moved to the other side of the elevator, and both of the men hurried out of her way, almost knocking over Marcella. She stumbled against the corner and grabbed the hand rail to keep from falling over. 

"Oh my goodness," said the woman in the enormous hoop skirt, "are you all right?"

Marcella shook her head and pushed her way to the buttons. She pressed the button for the next floor, and, after glancing over her shoulder, jabbed it with her thumb several more times. After several long moments, the elevator slowed to a stop and the doors opened. Marcella stumbled out, clutching her purse and trying to ignore her fellow passengers' calls of "Don't forget to drink some cold water!" and "You look like you could use a lie-down, darling!" 

She was rather surprised to find that the hallway looked just like a normal hallway: fluorescent lights, a drinking fountain set into a beige alcove, bland beach paintings hanging on the wall in between identical wooden doors. And to think she had been expecting a Grecian garden with fountains, or some such like. She hurried over to the drinking fountain and pressed the hand that wasn't holding her purse against the side button and bent over the stream of water. When she straightened up again, she was thinking much more clearly. Claustrophobia: gone. 

She wondered if she should try the stairs this time, but decided against it. She couldn't see the harm in returning to the elevators. 

The elevator pinged as it arrived. Marcella shifted her purse farther up her shoulder and prepared to step inside. As the doors opened, a young woman in a form-fitting silver jumpsuit and white goggles looked up. 

"G'ing zup?" she asked in an unfamiliar accent. Her companion, a man who appeared to be dressed in a toga and sandals. 

Marcella let out a small shriek and sprinted for the stairs. The woman in the silver jumpsuit shrugged and turned to the toga man. 

"Vat 'us dat all 'bout?"

"Δεν ξέρω."

Marcella scrambled up two flights of stairs before wearing out. She slowed to a jog and it wasn't too long until she reached floor number ten. She leaned against the door and pushed it open ever so slightly, in order to get a look at what was outside the stairwell. 

The hallway looked identical to the one several floors below, except for the view out the windows, which was slightly higher. She breathed a sigh of relief and stepped out.

Marcella stopped a few doors down from the stairwell. Well, this was the room. Did she dare enter?

Yes. She dared. 

Steeling herself for the worst, craziest, or just plain creepiest, she boldly knocked and then took a step back. A few moments later, the door opened a short bit and then closed, but not before Marcella caught a glimpse of a crackling fire in a fireplace and some cushy chairs. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all. She heard a chain lock being opened, and then the door opened for real. The man who stood just inside was dressed like the spawn of a zeerust B-movie and the entire steampunk genre. As he pushed his goggles onto the top of his head to take a look at her, a woman in pirate-y skirt and blouse combo with an ancient Egyptian headdress appeared. 

"Are you here for the Historic Welding Association meeting?" he asked pleasantly, while the Egytian pirate woman blew smoke from her cigar over his shoulder into Marcella's face

Marcella screamed and raced down the hall, still screaming and coughing. She retired to the country to take up beekeeping, and was never able to look at a history book again. 

LOL, Sherlock Holmes mythology gag. I'm not very proud of this, since it didn't turn out exactly how I wanted it to. Why do my two-parters always end up so disappointing?

WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN