Will Harris finds real life more exciting than comics

There is a saying, beloved of comic book nerds the world over. With great power, it says (pushing its NHS glasses up its acne-scarred nose with what it imagines to be an air of statesmanlike gravitas), comes great responsibility. And long hours.
It is this very maxim that springs unbidden into my friend H’s head, as she sits alone in the cramped office above the regional bookstore she assistant manages, having arrived at work an hour early to get cracking on some paperwork.

The telephone rings, and in her head it is Commissioner Gordon on the other end. She picks up the receiver.
“What do you mean you’re stuck in the lift?”

H runs downstairs. The shop is not open yet, but with the clock ticking dangerously close to the official opening time, the fact that one of her employees has got herself trapped in the store’s creaking elevator, with her bike, and without her asthma inhaler, is a piece of news H can do without.

“Amanda?” she bangs on the lift doors. “Amanda, are you alright? Can you breathe?” “Yeah man, I’m fine,” comes a deep and disembodied voice. “I called Tracey though. She’s on her way round.”

This is another piece of news H can do without. Tracey, Amanda’s girlfriend,
is not the kind of person you want in a crisis. True to form, 10 minutes later she storms in through the employees’ entrance and onto the shop floor like whatever a bull would be if it found itself not in a china shop but a mid-market book emporium. Possibly a Nazi.

“Men, women and children are pressed up against the glass like a zombie horde”

“Where is she?” she’s yelling. “Where is she?”
“She’s in the lift,” says H, trying hard to keep her voice a sarcasm free zone. “Upstairs. I’ve called the engineers before you ask. And health and safety.”
“Health and safety,” spits Tracey. “Take me to her. I’ve brought her inhaler.”
“You know where the lift is, Tracey,” says H.
“I really have to open up now. Look!” She gestures over at the front door, where every man, woman and child in town – having apparently woken up with the realisation that what’s missing from their lives is a brand new book – are pressed up against the glass like a zombie horde.

As Tracey stomps off, and H hurries to unlock the doors, she reflects on how comforting it would be to have her own, less terrifying version of Tracey; just to know there was someone out there who’d come running every time she got herself trapped inside a piece of heavy machinery.

She is still mulling this over when, climbing the stairs to check on Amanda, she hears Tracey’s voice. “Honestly babe,” she’s saying, “you see it on TV all the time. That lift could drop at any second…”
That, and a panicked Amanda, gasping for air.