I was about to check out of a resort when I realized I needed to go to the second floor to write a testimonial on the outside wall. I got into the elevator, which seemed unusually full. I was in a hurry and all I was thinking was that, although this meant a certain amount of climbing around outside, it shouldn’t take long.

The elevator didn’t stop at the second floor, however. It didn’t stop at any floor. I thought of elevator banks and decided it was unlikely an elevator would go straight up so many floors, not to mention that the resort was not a high rise. Now I was frightened, but I kept my fears to myself.

At long last the elevator stopped and opened on both sides. The front opened onto an enormous wood-paneled bar/lounge, while the back opened onto a wood-paneled, empty, wedge-shaped room barely large enough to accommodate me. It was more of a hollow wall than a room.

Everyone headed to the bar/lounge as though they’d discovered the resort’s hidden gem, but a compelling force, neither physical nor mental, was influencing me toward the wedge. At first I thought I was being entombed and was even more terrified. Some sense, perhaps from the same force pushing me toward it, reassured me that, despite appearances, this was the safer, more desirable place to be. The others had made their choice, and I could only look longingly after them and remember that I had been in a hurry. I felt like I was experiencing a taste of the afterlife, where choices and dangers are not obvious. Maybe all of us were dead.

And perhaps my previous perceptions of reality were petty and false.