[1] Cyrus Black glanced out the 43rd-floor window of his office building, at the lights of Manhattan, at about 9:30 one Friday night. His friends had gone out for pizza, but he had missed it. His girlfriend and his sister had gone to a club in Greenwich Village, but he had missed that too. He was a manager at a business magazine, and he had important business to do, and he wasn't done. He decided to go outside for a cigarette.

[2] Cyrus was not a superstitious man. He didn't worry about walking under ladders, or opening up his umbrella after he was already inside a house. He had been reminded that it was Friday the 13th, a traditionally unlucky day, by a co-worker, but he had forgotten it. As he rode the elevator from the 43rd floor to the back porch of the building, he was thinking about his business magazine project, an article about the stock market in Taiwan. He could hear an ambulance and the sounds of the city in the distance. But he was eager to finish his project, so he stomped out his cigarette and went back to the elevator.

[3] As the elevator rose, though, something happened. A small, fast power outage stopped it, and it shook a little before stopping. Cyrus was not hurt, but he knew something was wrong, and he looked around, pressing 43 again, hoping it would just start again. It didn't. The power of the building was on, but the power that ran the elevator wasn't working. He rang the alarm several times.

[4] Nothing happened. The building seemed to be empty. After a few minutes he rang it some more. He rang it in various patterns. He started screaming. He banged his fist against the door and the walls. He did this for about fifteen minutes. Still, nothing happened. Nobody came. Nothing worked. He screamed until his throat hurt.

[5] He investigated the possibility of breaking out of the elevator, by taking apart the walls or ceiling, but he couldn't. He used a pocket knife and a pen to poke around in the electric box, but it didn't work.

[6] Then, suddenly, when looking into the shaft from a crack in the door, he realized that he was on the 13th floor. He suddenly remembered that it was Friday the 13th, and began to wonder if it was just very very bad luck.

[7] Cyrus had a very bad night. He was awake for seven more hours, not only trying every possible way to get out of the elevator, unsuccessfully, but also imagining other unlucky situations, and possible reasons he could be being punished by the gods of luck. He had, in fact, not been a perfect person. But why was this happening to him? He smoked the rest of his cigarettes. Finally, early Saturday morning, he fell asleep.

[8] On Sunday afternoon, at about 3:30, the building security guard noticed him in the video monitor, and turned the elevator on again. Cyrus was free. He was very thirsty, but otherwise unharmed. He was very angry too. He knew he would never be able to ride that or any elevator again.

[9] Cyrus has still not gone back to work. His lawyer said that he was still "in a state of shock," and they filed a 25-million-dollar lawsuit against the owners and managers of the building, which has not been resolved yet.