A Second Chance

I pulled the beanie lower over my hair, watching, wrapped up in an oversized jacket, as finally, maintenance returned to the broken elevator, a month after they'd left me trapped inside. Deaf to my screams for help. Deaf to the banging on the metal doors.
I hung out in the shadows, as they turned on the power, fixed whatever issue they couldn't have fixed a month ago, and bring the elevator up to the tenth floor.
Despite knowing what they would find, I leaned forward, curious to see the scene from an outsider's perspective as the elevator doors opened.
I bit my lip, cringing back. Oh yah. It was worse than I'd expected. The smell was enough to make a grown man cry. These maintenance guys didn't stand a chance. The sight that greeted them wasn't pretty.
Claw marks in the padding, bloody streaks on the wall. I had fought for my life in that tiny cell.
I'd lost.

If it had only been a few days, maybe, maybe I would have survived.
But a month, without food or water. I had no chance, though until the very end I had believed that I had. That someone would find me. That I would be rescued.

No one had heard me.
No one had wondered about my absence.
I'd been stuck right under their noses.
And nothing.

My rotting body. I turned away. I had loved that skirt I'd been wearing. My hair, a rats nest I could hardly get under control on a good day. And my fingers, bloody, worn down from repeated attempts to escape.

I missed me. I'd had a good life. Not the one I wanted, but one I was content with, happy with. Just trying to make ends meet until I could accomplish my goals.

I stayed, watching as the ambulance arrived, as the crime scene unit showed up, as my body was photographed and finally, finally wheeled away.
With the decomposition, there would be no easy way to identify me. But finally, I had been found.

"Get your fill, Miss?"
I looked up surprised that a police officer was standing in front of me.
"What?"
"Of the scene." He jerked his head to the elevator, "You've been standing here the entire time, I've been here. Probably even before then. Is that your handy work?" He asked flipping open a notebook. I didn't think that the police used those anymore. "Did you ensure this woman died?"
I exhaled, getting over my surprise that he actually saw me, spoke to me. Perhaps them finally finding my body meant that I could finally start over in this new one. "I tried to save her." I told him. "To no avail."
"Save her? This woman has been dead for at least a week."
My hands clenched, I met his eyes. Hoping he saw the pain in mine. "Three weeks actually. Stuck in that elevator for a week and a half before she died, because those idiots assumed it was empty. Because the residents of this hole in the wall of an apartment thought it was just partygoers making a fuss just one floor up or down."
He frowned, hand drifting down to the gun at his waist. "How do you know all this? Why did you not call for them sooner?"
"Because, Officer." I said, pulling the hood of my jacket over my beanie. "I am the dead woman."

-Inspiration from reading an article online about a woman's body being found in an elevator after maintenance turned it off and didn't come back to fix it for a month.