Theodore Chasseriau The Tepidarium painting

Theodore Chasseriau The Tepidarium paintingFrancisco de Goya Teresa Sureda paintingEmile Munier Pardon Mama paintingBartolome Esteban Murillo The Little Fruit Seller painting
lived—had lived—on the fifth floor.Each of the first four floors held four large apartments, but the highest was divided into only two penthouse units.A faint unpleasant odor lingered in the elevator from a recent the walls closer, the ceiling lower, the machinery more suspect.Perhaps the doors wouldn’t open. The emergency phone might be out might not work in here.In an earthquake, the shaft might collapse, crushing the cab to the dimensions of a coffin.Nearing the fifth floor, he realized that these symptoms of claustrophobia, which passenger. Complex and subtle, the scent teased memory, but Ethan could not quite identify it.As he ascended past the second floor, the elevator cab suddenly impressed him as being smaller than he remembered from previous visits. The ceiling loomed low, like a lid on a cook pot.Passing the third floor, he realized that he was breathing faster than he should be, as though he were a man on a brisk walk. The air seemed to have grown thin, inadequate.By the time he reached the fourth floor, he became convinced that he detected a wrongness in the sound of the elevator motor, in the hum of cables drawn through guide wheels. This creak, that tick, this squeak might be the sound of a linchpin pulling loose in the heart of the machinery.The air grew thinner still,