This happened to me when I was about 15 years old.  At that age I was involved with the wrong crowd and some times would stay out and didn’t return home until my parents had left for work.  I would hang out at snooker parlours, illegal gambling dens and strip joints.  In some ways, I am glad that I went through those ‘yauleilongtong’ days.  It’s part of life’s many experiences for me.

I’m grateful that even though I met people involved with drugs, my parents had placed a strong enough foundation in me to never allow myself to ‘just give it a try’.  I also had a drug addict for an uncle and he caused my grandmother a lot of tears.  I think I’m the only one who knew about those tears because when I was a young boy I slept with my grandma.  My grandmother seemed like a very strong woman to many but at night in bed, she would some times cry and talk to herself about my uncle.  She would ask herself what she had done wrong.  So that left quite an impact in me as well.

Oh wow… that is not what I had wanted to blog about.  See how my mind is all over the place.  I started, wanting to blog about something else and went out of topic to drug abuse and my grandma crying.  Geez.

Anyway back to topic.

Except for another guy and myself, the rest of my gang of frens lived in _Sentul_.  In those days, the last available bus back to my area ended around 11pm+.  After that time there were no buses left.  Most times after whatever the main event was (whether it was snooker ka, some auntie strip dancing ka), my gang and I would go back to a fren’s flat.

It would be in the early hours of the morning and we would hang around a playground below his flat.  If there were some Indian fellas around, we would play football on the basketball court and we were loud.  Loud and vulgar.  Imagine it’s 1am and you have a bunch of thugs playing football below your flat while shouting vulgarities.  We had the police called on us once but they just asked us to go home.

When it was finally time to call it a night, I would go up to crash at my fren’s flat.  After a quick shower, a few of us would sit at the balcony and starting talking kok until one by one we would doze off.

On one such night, we ran out of cigarettes and had to ‘lalalililaptampong’ & ‘1-2 jus’ to see who would be the one who would go down to the 7-11 across the road to restock.  The unlucky one was me. 

After cursing my ‘1-2 jus’ skills and putting on my shirt, I went on about my task.  It was around 3.30am on a weekday.  The roads were deserted.  I picked up the ciggies and returned right after.  I entered the lift and pressed 9, the floor of my fren’s place.  When the lift was passing between the 4th & 5th floor, the lift suddenly stopped and the door started to open but could only manage a small gap.  Enough for someone to stick their head through.

I didn’t know what to do.  I started pressing all the buttons but got no reaction.  I could see outside the lift via the head sized gap but I wasn’t going to risk sticking my head out and the lift suddenly decides to work again.  I could see both the 4th and 5th floor.  The lift had stopped right between the floors.  My initial thought was that I had no choice but to wait until someone passed by and ask them for help.  But then again, it was almost 4am.  How long was I going to have to wait?  Apparently not long.

I heard panting.  More like a deep panting, the kind that a dog makes.  A very dark, almost black man stuck his head in.  The height was just nice for me to kick his head but I didn’t because I was freaked out!  I stumbled backwards into the wall.  He had these very round blood shot eyes as if someone who hadn’t slept for ages.  Even from the back of the lift staring down at his face, I could clearly see the red veins in his eyeballs.  He uttered in a sad tone, a very long "aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrr".  He only did this once.

I didn’t say anything because I was scared shitless.  I swear I was 30 seconds away from shouting like a girl.  He stared at me and waved his finger in front of his face at me, as if to say ‘no, no’ and then stuck out his tongue and gave the lift floor a lick.  He then pulled his head away and left.  Or at least I think he left.

My reflexes were to quickly shut the lift door by repeatedly pressing the close button.  For some reason it worked and the lift started moving again.  As I watched the floor indicators slowly counting up to 9, I prayed hard that he wasn’t going to be standing right in front of the lift when the door opens.

When the door opened, I ran like a mad cow towards my fren’s place.  I told my frens about it and at first they thought I was pulling their leg until they realized that I was genuinely scared.  I felt safer in a group and we decided to go down to the 4th floor.  Nothing.

My fren who lives there doesn’t believes me coz he has never seen anyone matching that description.  Till today I still don’t know whether it was just a nutcase or it was something supernatural or whatever.  Or maybe it was the lift maintenance man and that’s how you get the lift to start working again.  By licking the floor.

I had actually forgotten about it until something similar happened tonight.  I got stuck in the lift between floors and the door slightly opened.  Someone did partially stick his head in but it was the security guard.  Staring down at him reminded me of that incident.  Thank goodness there was someone in the lift with me or else I would have screamed like a girl.  Or worst, what if my reaction was to kick the first head that I see.

The guard told me that some lifts do open a small gap to let some air in.  So now you know.