We were living in an apartment in a high-rise that was part of one of those big mixed-used developments they're always using to revitalize downtowns. To get home, depending on which entrance you used off the street, required traversing rather a lot of three-story indoor mall, taking escalators and then a grand staircase to reach an elevator lobby on a balcony overlooking the big atrium of the mall.
It must have been a swank place to live because I saw Hoda Qutb and Ellen DeGeneres chatting on their way to catch a cab from the elevator lobby.
Anyway, I'm standing there waiting for the elevator going up and one comes from below. The doors open and all of us start to step forward to get on, but the car is full, so everybody stops to wait.
The doors start to close, but this one guy at the very front is absorbed in his smartphone screen and, as he realizes the doors are closing, he sticks his foot out to cause the doors to reopen. Only something's faulty and the car is already halfway to the next floor.
Dude realizes he's about to step into several stories of thin air, tries to backpedal, drops his phone into the elevator shaft, attempts to lean forward and grab it, overbalances and goes face-first into the elevator chasm (I say chasm because all the elevators in a bank share a single shaft).
There's a Wilhelm scream, cut short by a sickening thud as he caromed off the back wall of the shaft. I blurted "My God!" and just sat down there on the carpet, lightheaded.
The dream went on for a while longer as I kept doing normal activities, but now I was noting that the whole shopping center was one giant falling hazard: Decorative staircases with too-large gaps in the treads, soaring walkways with way-too-low railings, that sort of thing. I woke up with sweaty palms.
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