Unit 114

The man at the self-storage place was very keen for Theo to take Unit 114, and Theo, who had a couch and nowhere to put it, was not in a position to ask why. "Half price," the man said. "First three months. Just — you know. It's a good unit." It was a good unit. That was the strange part. Theo had expected damp, or a smell, or a roof problem. Instead Unit 114 was clean and dry and oddly deep, deeper than the units on either side, which Theo only noticed because he had spent a boring year doing measurements for a living. He moved the couch in. He moved in the boxes, the bike, the lamp his ex had not wanted. And it was while he was stacking the last boxes against the back wall that he understood the unit was not just deep. The back wall was not the back wall. There was a door in it. A perfectly ordinary door, white-painted, slightly ajar. And cold air was coming under it, and the cold air smelled, very faintly, of a forest after rain.