title: Elevator Shaft
author: Lowe, Barry
description: Every love affair has its ups and downs but this one also has a stop button.Romance: Micky is a young guy trying to improve his life while living on a run-down high-rise public housing estate but it's difficult when he has no qualifications and is studying part time to get his high school diploma. After he is stabbed during a homophobic: attack he wants out even though he finds himself attracted to Trig, the leader of the gang that attacked him. Blond-haired Adonis, Trig, is an enigma until the day he traps Micky in the elevator of their building. Expecting the worst, Micky is surprised by the favour Trig asks. For a few seconds there I thought I was safe. Then a hand thrust into the narrow space between the closing elevator doors, cutting the beam, and they sprang apart like startled children. I took a deep breath, and tensed my muscles, ready to flee.I never understood: he both terrified me and turned my cock hard, hard as life on this council housing estate — hard as it was for me to forget the taunts, the hard-assed graffiti scrawled across the brick wall outside my flat, hard as the steel blade that sliced me open when my tormentors got tired of my passive resistance. The passive resistance wasn't a Gandhi-like conscious decision, it's just I'm not very brave, not very strong. Especially when there's a gang of them.I'd been released from hospital ten days before after two weeks flat on my back while my council flat lay at the mercy of my torturers. I knew I'd be lucky if there was anything left of it. My scrapheap furniture would be stolen or else broken up, there would be disgusting accusations scrawled across the walls, and shit smeared on the curtains and windows. Oh, yeah, they'd done it before. While I was at work as a lowly paid shelf stacker. It's all I can get. I'm not the brightest spark in the lighter, though I'm trying to do something about it. I'm going to community college at night to try to graduate high school. That's a major scholastic achievement on this estate.Get me: scholastic. That's what comes of education.Normally I walk up the nine floors, but that day I had no energy. My side still hurt, the bandages tight, making walking a slow and awkward shuffle, so stairs were totally out of the question. However, I was feeling good. I'd totally nailed the exam which meant I'd caught up with all the work I'd missed while I recovered from the attack. The physical wound had just about healed but I was still a nervous wreck around the estate.The police and the counselors and the others in authority had clucked their concern like chooks in a wired enclosure, especially to the local press, but they disappeared pretty quickly once the spotlight focused on something more compelling and I slipped into the computer as just another statistic.If the condition of my flat after I'd been confined to a hospital bed had been an exam question, I would have got a High Distinction. I managed to salvage the mattress, but it stank of piss and contempt. It was all I had to sleep on until I begged, borrowed, and cajoled a few items from charitable organizations. The clean-up I did myself, determined I would never allow the bastards to drive me out of my home. Not that I had a choice in the matter. It was my home come hell or high water because there was simply not enough public housing to go around. The waiting list was years and there were unlikely to be any vacancies in the near future just to move one pathetic faggot because he was constantly harassed. I had to make the most of it – or live on the streets.Then I made the mistake of getting in the elevator again. I cursed myself for the damn fool I was when Trig broke the beam and the doors opened, the evil grin on his face as he saw me was sufficient for me to take a chance on getting out. I mumbled 'Excuse me' as I attempted to brush past him but he stuck out his arm, successfully corralling me inside as the doors closed.