I’LL TRY MY FLOOR

The bottom lift’s been in service barely two weeks since modernisation and when I got back from town this afternnoon it was on three. After I’d pressed the call button I heard from above Lift Voice saying, “Doors opening. Doors opening...” The lift didn’t come down.
I banged on the door then walked up the stairs three flights to see what was going on and if needed to remind someone other people use the lift not only them.
“Doors opening. Doors opening...”
The door was open and seemed, trying to close, was behaving like it was caught on something it couldn’t pull itself away from. A man came out of the flat just in front of me to the left.
‘Can you hear that inside?’ I said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s the first I knew of it.’
‘You haven’t phoned it in then?’
‘No,’ he said.
“Doors opening. Doors opening...”
We approached the lift. Looked up. Saw the wheels and belts of the door mechanism moving no more than a few centimetres one way before springing back the other. Something somewhere was jammed.
‘Mind your fingers,’ I said when the man from the flat put his hand in the gap between the shaft and lift and pressed a lever that didn’t seem to make anything happen, not anything of use to us right then.
“Doors opening. Doors opening...”
‘The door’s angled,’ he said.
He pushed the door back into its hide a couple of times and Lift Voice stopped.
We stood quiet. Waiting. Then he made to press one of the floor buttons.
‘Hang on,’ I said getting into the lift. ‘I’ll try my floor.’