The Building That Didn't Exist
The building vanished between the lobby and the sixteenth floor. I couldn't find the company. I ended up at the top floor—an unfinished ruin with no phone, no lights, no way out. I made it to the submission just in time. But I've never been the same.
In Cantonese, there's a word for it. Saei. It means something like perpetually unlucky—the kind of person who trips on flat ground, who gets rained on when the sky is clear, who always gets the short end of every stick until the stick breaks and then keeps getting shorter.
I've been that person my whole life. From childhood to adulthood. You learn to laugh about it eventually, but mostly you just learn to expect it.
Let me tell you about the time I almost cost my company a major contract. Because the building vanished.
---
I was sent to submit a tender for a project. A big one. I took the elevator to the sixteenth floor of a commercial building downtown—a place I'd been to before, several times. The doors opened and I stepped out.
Nothing.
No company name on the wall. No directory. No floor number above the elevator doors. The hallway stretched in both directions, identical doors on both sides, all of them unmarked. I walked left. Right. Checked the stairwell. No floor indicator there either.
I took the elevator back down to the lobby. Still nothing. No floor directory. The security guard at the front desk looked at me blankly when I asked about the company. "What floor?" he said. I told him. He shrugged.
I went back up. Down. Up again. Each time I stepped out on sixteen, it was the same corridor. No signs. No markings. The building felt longer than it should, like it had shifted while I wasn't looking.
I checked my phone. Searched for the company name. Nothing. Not online, not in my maps, not anywhere. The company I had visited just two weeks ago had apparently ceased to exist between the lobby and the sixteenth floor.
The submission deadline was in forty minutes.
I got into another elevator and pressed a random floor. It stopped at the top level—thirty-second floor—and when the doors opened, I stepped out into a ghost.
The entire floor was unfinished. Exposed wiring. Dust everywhere. No lights except for a single flickering fluorescent at the end of the corridor. The air smelled like wet concrete. I heard nothing—not even the hum of machinery or the distant sound of the city. Just silence and dust.
A security guard was sitting at a makeshift desk near the elevator. He looked as lost as I felt.
I asked about the company. He said he'd only started a few days ago. He didn't know.
I asked to use his phone. No phone line up here, he said.
I looked around. The unfinished walls. The dim lighting. The complete isolation. It was the kind of place where someone could disappear and nobody would ever find them. I got back in the elevator.
The doors closed and I stood there, alone, in the dark. I started crying. Not dramatic crying—just the quiet, helpless kind. The kind where your body does it without permission because your brain has run out of options.
The elevator stopped. The doors opened.
Sixteenth floor.
And there it was. The company. Right there. The door open, people already seated inside, the moderator ready to begin.
I walked in, submitted the tender, and sat down. I was the last one in.
---
After that, I started refusing to handle tender submissions. "I'm unlucky," I told my manager. "I shouldn't go." I never explained why. How could I? Who would believe that the building had been impossible to find? That the sixteenth floor had been there and then wasn't, and then was again, just in time?
I left that job eventually. I leave every job eventually. The pattern is always the same—good company, bad luck, something forces me out. I stopped fighting it.
The building thing still haunts me, though. Not in a supernatural way. In the way that you start to wonder if the world is actually as stable as it looks. If the floors you trust are always going to be there. If you're only able to find what you're looking for when it decides to let you find it.
I don't believe in curses. But I believe in patterns. And mine is: something always finds a way to make things harder than they need to be.
At this point, I've made peace with it. What else can you do?
---
*Have your own story of impossible places or chronic misfortune? Share it at CreepyVibes.*
I've been that person my whole life. From childhood to adulthood. You learn to laugh about it eventually, but mostly you just learn to expect it.
Let me tell you about the time I almost cost my company a major contract. Because the building vanished.
---
I was sent to submit a tender for a project. A big one. I took the elevator to the sixteenth floor of a commercial building downtown—a place I'd been to before, several times. The doors opened and I stepped out.
Nothing.
No company name on the wall. No directory. No floor number above the elevator doors. The hallway stretched in both directions, identical doors on both sides, all of them unmarked. I walked left. Right. Checked the stairwell. No floor indicator there either.
I took the elevator back down to the lobby. Still nothing. No floor directory. The security guard at the front desk looked at me blankly when I asked about the company. "What floor?" he said. I told him. He shrugged.
I went back up. Down. Up again. Each time I stepped out on sixteen, it was the same corridor. No signs. No markings. The building felt longer than it should, like it had shifted while I wasn't looking.
I checked my phone. Searched for the company name. Nothing. Not online, not in my maps, not anywhere. The company I had visited just two weeks ago had apparently ceased to exist between the lobby and the sixteenth floor.
The submission deadline was in forty minutes.
I got into another elevator and pressed a random floor. It stopped at the top level—thirty-second floor—and when the doors opened, I stepped out into a ghost.
The entire floor was unfinished. Exposed wiring. Dust everywhere. No lights except for a single flickering fluorescent at the end of the corridor. The air smelled like wet concrete. I heard nothing—not even the hum of machinery or the distant sound of the city. Just silence and dust.
A security guard was sitting at a makeshift desk near the elevator. He looked as lost as I felt.
I asked about the company. He said he'd only started a few days ago. He didn't know.
I asked to use his phone. No phone line up here, he said.
I looked around. The unfinished walls. The dim lighting. The complete isolation. It was the kind of place where someone could disappear and nobody would ever find them. I got back in the elevator.
The doors closed and I stood there, alone, in the dark. I started crying. Not dramatic crying—just the quiet, helpless kind. The kind where your body does it without permission because your brain has run out of options.
The elevator stopped. The doors opened.
Sixteenth floor.
And there it was. The company. Right there. The door open, people already seated inside, the moderator ready to begin.
I walked in, submitted the tender, and sat down. I was the last one in.
---
After that, I started refusing to handle tender submissions. "I'm unlucky," I told my manager. "I shouldn't go." I never explained why. How could I? Who would believe that the building had been impossible to find? That the sixteenth floor had been there and then wasn't, and then was again, just in time?
I left that job eventually. I leave every job eventually. The pattern is always the same—good company, bad luck, something forces me out. I stopped fighting it.
The building thing still haunts me, though. Not in a supernatural way. In the way that you start to wonder if the world is actually as stable as it looks. If the floors you trust are always going to be there. If you're only able to find what you're looking for when it decides to let you find it.
I don't believe in curses. But I believe in patterns. And mine is: something always finds a way to make things harder than they need to be.
At this point, I've made peace with it. What else can you do?
---
*Have your own story of impossible places or chronic misfortune? Share it at CreepyVibes.*