The 3:17 Stop

At 3:17 every morning, the old elevator in Building C stopped between floors.

No one knew why. Maintenance had checked the cables, the motor, the buttons. They replaced parts that didn’t need replacing and tightened bolts that were already tight. Everything worked. Still, at 3:17 A.M., the lights flickered and the car sighed to a halt, a long metallic exhale, as if remembering something it would rather forget.

Julia knew this because she was always awake at that hour.

Insomnia had hollowed out her nights and given them back to her in pieces. The building felt different after midnight. The radiators clicked like nervous fingers. Someone’s TV murmured through the wall, laugh tracks slowed by sleep. Outside, the city thinned to a few distant sirens and the occasional car rushing through a green light meant for no one. And then, right on time, the elevator stopped.

The sound wasn’t loud. It was a subtle wrongness, a pause where motion should be. Once you noticed it, you couldn’t unhear it.

The first night she heard it, she thought nothing of it. Old buildings made old sounds. The second night, she counted the seconds between the flicker and the stop. The third, she stepped into the hallway in her socks, the carpet cool and worn beneath her feet.

The elevator doors were closed, their brushed metal dull in the dim light. The call button glowed, dim and steady, as if it had been waiting for her. She pressed it.

Nothing happened.

She pressed it again. This time, a faint click answered her, followed by a voice from inside.

“Hello?”

It was a man’s voice. Calm. Tired. The kind of voice that had learned how to wait.

Julia froze, her finger still resting on the button. Her first thought was that someone was playing a joke. Her second was that no one in this building stayed up late enough to bother.

“You’re stuck?” she asked.

“Yes,” the man said. “I think so. What time is it?”

She checked her phone. The screen felt too bright. “3:17.”

There was a pause, longer than before. “That figures.”

She didn’t know why, but she sat down on the hallway carpet with her back against the wall. The elevator hummed softly, like it was trying to pretend everything was normal.

“How long have you been in there?” she asked.

“Hard to say,” he replied. “It’s always dark when it happens.”

They talked like that, through metal and silence. About small things, at first. Where they worked. He said he did bookkeeping for a shipping company, or at least he used to. She told him she designed websites she didn’t care about for people she never met. He laughed at that, a quiet sound that echoed strangely in the shaft.

“What do you do to pass the time?” she asked.

“I listen,” he said. “Mostly I wait for someone to answer.”

He said his name was Vincent. He asked hers twice, as if afraid to forget it. Each time, she said it slowly.

At 3:24, the elevator shuddered. The sound made her heart jump. At 3:25, it continued down, the hum growing louder as the car moved away.

“Wait,” Julia said, standing too quickly. “Can I see you?”

The doors stayed closed. “I don’t think that’s how this works,” Vincent said, almost gently.

“How what works?”

But the elevator was already moving, the sound fading like a thought you lose halfway through a sentence.

The next night, Julia waited by the elevator at 3:16. She brought a sweater and sat on the floor, watching the numbers above the doors. When the lights flickered and the car stopped, she pressed the button immediately.

It stopped. The lights flickered.

No voice answered her this time.

She waited until 3:30. Then 3:45. Eventually, the building settled back into its quiet, and she went back to her apartment feeling foolish and strangely disappointed.

Weeks passed. She stopped sleeping entirely. She drank coffee she didn’t enjoy and stared at screens without absorbing anything. Every night, she watched the elevator fail and recover, fail and recover, always at the same minute. Sometimes she spoke anyway, just in case.

“Are you there?” “It’s Julia.” “I’m still here.”

The elevator never answered. She told no one. Some things feel smaller if you keep them to yourself.

One morning, with dark circles pressed into her face like bruises, she asked the building manager about it.

“The elevator?” he said, squinting at her over his glasses. “That’s odd. Building C hasn’t had an elevator since the fire.”

“What fire?”

“The one in 1998,” he said, already turning back to his paperwork. “Man got trapped inside overnight. Power outage. By the time they reached him…”

Julia didn’t wait for the rest.

That night, at 3:17, she stood in front of the elevator doors and pressed the button. Her hand was steady.

“I’m here,” she said.

From inside, after a long pause that stretched until she thought she’d imagined everything, a voice answered, soft and relieved.

“Hello?”

She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Her knees felt weak, and she leaned her forehead against the cool metal of the doors.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come back,” Vincent said.

“I didn’t know if you could,” she replied. “I didn’t know if any of this was real.”

He laughed softly. “I say that every night.”

They talked longer this time. The minutes slid past unnoticed. Vincent told her things he hadn’t before. About the way the air grew stale after the lights went out. About counting his breaths so he wouldn’t panic. About how the worst part wasn’t the dark, but the silence after the building lost power, when even the hum of the city disappeared.

“I thought someone would hear me,” he said. “I kept yelling. My throat hurt for days. Or minutes. It’s hard to tell.”

Julia pressed her palm flat against the door. The metal was cool, but she imagined warmth on the other side, a hand mirroring hers.

“You’re not alone,” she said, and meant it more than she had meant anything in a long time.

At 3:24, the familiar shudder came. The elevator groaned, protesting.

“Before it goes,” Vincent said quickly, “can I ask you something?”

“Yes.”

“Will you keep coming back?”

She swallowed. “Yes.”

The hum returned, growing louder, and then the elevator moved on, taking his voice with it.

The next day, Julia called in sick. She slept for the first time in weeks, a heavy, dreamless sleep that left her disoriented and oddly calm. When she woke, the light outside her window was already fading.

That night, she brought a blanket. The next, a thermos of coffee. She started telling Vincent about things he couldn’t see. The way the hallway light flickered. The scuff marks on the baseboards. The plant on the second floor that someone kept forgetting to water.

He listened like these details mattered. Like they anchored him.

Over time, small things changed.

The elevator stopped more gently. The lights flickered less. Once, she thought she heard something beneath the hum — soft, rhythmic, almost like breathing.

Julia didn’t mark the days anymore. She brought the blanket. Then the thermos. Then nothing at all, because she knew where she’d be at 3:17. She told Vincent about the hallway light that never stayed steady, the scuff marks no one cleaned, the plant on the second floor that kept surviving neglect.

He listened like these details mattered. Like they tethered him.

Seasons shifted without ceremony. The building aged. Julia did too.

Then one night, at 3:17, the elevator stopped.

She pressed the button.

“Hello,” Vincent said — and his voice was different. Clearer. Closer.

Her stomach tightened. “What is it?”

“I can see the floor number,” he said, wonder threading through the words. “I’ve never seen it before.”

Her heart kicked hard against her ribs. “Which one?”

“Three.”

The elevator shuddered.

This time, it didn’t continue.

The doors opened.

The car was empty. Dust lay thick on the floor, untouched. The air carried the faint smell of smoke and something long sealed away.

Julia stepped inside anyway.

At 3:25, the doors closed.

At 3:26, the elevator began to move.

Down the hall, the call button went dark for the first time in years.

No one noticed at first. Old buildings always find new ways to be quiet.