A Sigh of Something Perhaps

The building where I work on a Saturday is mostly deserted, and presents a far different face than the one it wears during the working week. A non-descript building, it is almost on the sea front, next to an old church currently holding an exhibition on 'the way things used to be'. Stretched over eight floors, the building is usually busy with people clutching files and five pence coffees from the vending machines, endless glances at the clock as everyone waits for their next break, for lunchtime, for going home.
Like seeing your school at night, or on a Sunday, there is almost something almost transgressive about being in there for four hours on a Saturday morning. There aren't very many people in for a start, a small group of 'customer service advisors' huddled around their pods in the midst of all this novel emptiness. Like sheltering in a wasteland, but instead of rain a near silence pounding down on us all. The break rooms feel curiously empty, and the administration sections with all their rows of empty desks and chairs look somehow forlorn, but only recently deserted, as if everyone has only just left their posts. Leaving the call-centre floor for the toilets, and with the voices of co-workers locked out by the shutting of the door, there is an oddly haunted atmosphere. A slightly restless silence, and the thought that those eight flight of stairs, waiting just down the corridor provides a pleasingly disquieting atmosphere. Slightly haunted flights.
No-one uses them really. Emergencies perhaps, or to get to either a floor above or a floor below.
As I stepped into the lifts for my mid-morning break, the humming of the lift doors as they closed seemed almost an animal noise. A sigh of something perhaps. Empty buildings are more alive somehow. Freed from the shackles of people, they flex their freedom, and all those empty corridors and locked rooms seem suddenly more full of activity, and stepping into one of these rooms gives one the impression that someone has only just left.
As I stood in the lift, the mirror behind me, I wondered, what would happen if the lift doors opened onto an entirely different floor, what would I find there? A phantom call centre, and the ghosts of the workers there drawn and pale, inbound calls from a nightmare campaign, existential insurance from beyond the grave. Dream-surveys conducted in an air as green as absinthe.
I tried to find the smoking area that was in the underground car-park. Usually we use a pleasant space between the building itself and the church next door, but this is locked at the weekend, -a move to deter the West Street drinkers of Friday and Saturday night perhaps. Usually I would go at the front of the building, but I thought I would find this subterrenean tobaccohaven.
Not quite an underground car-park perhaps, but the darkness of the grilles that encloses it gives the impression of a permanent murky twilight. Pipes running up ragged brickwork and stained wall. Piles of bins in the corner, sinister looking doors closed against unknown spaces. and warnings of a 'danger of death'. The few gathered like rusting factory site wolves.
There seemed to be no smoking signs everywhere. I admitted defeat and went to the front of the building where I normnally do.