Storage Unit

I’m stuck in a simulation. That’s what this must be. This can’t be real.

My legs ache. And for good reason. I’ve been walking for hours. If the sun is in the sky, I can’t see it, but that might be somewhat due to the orientation of the storage unit buildings. They are continuous and contiguous.

###

When I drove into the place earlier that morning, I was excited to get my pots and pans back and the promise of seeing my ex. I felt enough time had passed where we might resume our friendship or possibly even our relationship. She was crazy, but I had come to learn that I was just as crazy as her.

I entered the code Beth gave me, and the gate slid sideways, granting me access to the complex. I drove in and began looking for her unit. 

That was, near as I can tell, seven hours ago. 

There was only one way through the complex. Ten yards into the complex, the road turned left, and there was a row of storage units on both sides of the lane. Then fifty yards beyond that, it turned right and then right again, on and on and on. 

There’s no way this place could be that big. It was in Plano, yet I felt like I’d driven to Oklahoma. 

For the first several stretches of the lane, I didn’t bother to look at the unit numbers. Instead, I was looking for her Jeep. She told me she would be early but for me not to come until 8:45. Beth said she was meeting her daughter and her boyfriend at the unit before me. I assumed the purpose of that was the same as the meeting she had set up with me: to return some personal items to each of us. I drove down fifteen lanes between switchbacks before I began to get anxious. I drove down what I felt were only a dozen more before I finally stopped my car and studied the unit numbers.

There was something wrong with the numbers.

I need to get my eyes checked. I remember thinking that.

The numbers refused to come into focus. So, I parked, got out, and approached the nearest unit.

The digits looked like a mixture of Chinese characters, hieroglyphics, and arcane symbols. The most disconcerting thing was the numbers weren’t static things. They continued to morph from symbol to character and back again. This would be a neat trick, but the unit numbers were painted on thin squares of metal that were screwed to the units. This wasn’t an LCD screen.

Screw the pans. I’ll call Beth later and tell her something came up.

I knew she’d be angry with me, but I was used to that. It was the reason we broke up in the first place. Her temper and mood swings were untenable.

I should go see an optometrist today.

Memory is a funny thing until the day it stops being funny.

I’m not 100 percent sure what happened after the set of squiggly numbers. I want to say that I got back in my car and looked at my phone. I was going to schedule an eye doctor’s appointment right away. But I noticed there was no signal in the complex. I figured this was likely due to the long series of metal-walled lanes I was trapped in. 

Have these walls gotten higher since I drove in here?

Such a ridiculous notion. 

Forget your eyes. You need to see a psychiatrist. Growing walls indeed. 

I returned my phone to the center console. I assume that is where it is even now.

I sat in my car, its engine purring for a minute, maybe two. I tell myself the memory is true and accurate. 

But it was only after sitting there reminiscing about the times that came before the angry times that I put the car in gear and executed a smooth three-point turnaround. 

The important thing was that I only did ONE turnaround. 

But that was then. I’ve lost track of how many 180-degree turns I’ve done since. 

It’s not like the unit numbers are helping guide me out of this impossible place.

At that point, I didn’t know if I was approaching zero or infinity. Zero was my desired destination: the entryway to this Escheresque storage unit. Infinity was the opposite pole of zero, stuck way up in the hell of high numbers.

Doubts became real problems. A set of a thousand storage lanes can seem infinite if you keep reversing direction through them.

I drove towards what I felt sure was the exit. After an hour, I reasoned that as much as I loathed the idea and the distrust it instilled in my memory faculty, I must have done two three-point turnarounds. So, I did another. 

I’d not seen another vehicle since entering this place.

After that, I began driving faster and faster than was safe. Making wild erratic turns around the tight lanes, then speeding up for the fifty-yard stretches between the turns. 

The place was impossible. There’s no way it could be that big. It would have to be as large as the DFW metroplex, and it’s in a neighborhood in Plano? Impossible.

At one point, my eye fell on the yellow Post-it note stuck to my dash: my daily to-do list. The third time on that list was a one-word reminder: gas. I need to fill up my tank at some point.

My eyes darted from my list to my indicator panel. 

Damn it!

The low-fuel amber light had come on at some point. 

Damn it!

I parked as close to the nearest storage unit as I dared. If another car were to enter, it would be a tight fit getting past each other. I switched off my car and sat for a few minutes, giving my anxiety enough time to do what it clearly wanted to do: panic.

At that point, my memory was vague again. I either pulled the keys from the ignition or I didn’t.

Screw the pans, screw my car, and screw Beth. I want out of here. Now.

There was no longer any question of whether the walls were getting taller; they were. 

When I’d entered hours before, the buildings weren’t over-tall. Maybe fifteen feet high, give or take.

By then, however, they felt much taller than that. 

Memory!

I walked down to the next pair of turns. I was getting closer, I told myself, to the way out of this puzzle.

Doubts arose again. 

When I headed away from the car, am I sure I went in the same direction the car was pointed, or did I get turned around? 

OCD can be so debilitating. 

Yeah, I should be with Beth. Not now and not here, of course, but later, when I’m away from this place, I will call her and mend things. Somehow. Somehow, I will get her to address her anger issues. Her crazy matches mine: she’s broken like me.

I turned and retraced my steps to the pair of turns I’d taken on my way out of there. 

The turns themselves are void of storage units.

I walked past the second turn, looked up, and the world threatened to fall away from me. 

Where’s my car? Oh, hey! I have a question. Where the hell is my car?

My car was gone.

You’re just confused. Clearly, you must have walked down two lanes. It’s understandable, but you’re not being mindful now.

I ran down the lane and made the two left-hand turns. Empty.

The storage unit wasn’t a static place. It was growing, swelling, and elongating in both directions.

You can forget all about zero, my man. This place has gone from a closed-ended set to an open-ended one in a matter of hours. Zero had been replaced by negative infinity. 

 I patted my pockets and cringed.

In my mind’s eye, I saw myself depositing my phone in the center console.

I wanted to cry. This was unfair. Either I was trapped in some alien construct, some alternate, parallel reality, just above or below the one I woke up in, or my memory was gone, and I was continuing to reverse my path, expanding a finite number of lanes into the perception of infinity.

The sky was no help at all. It wasn’t cloudy, but there was no perception of the sun or the passage of time. The open field of blue above had shrunk in size with the taller and taller walls.

###

I’m stuck in a simulation.

I walked and walked. I stopped caring about zero and infinity. I walked.

I told myself I would come to one end or the other, eventually.

But that was weeks ago. I no longer believe this place has an endpoint. My car has already floated uncountable infinities away from me.

The unit numbers still assault my senses as I walk past them. The sky above is a single thin line of blue-sky miles above me. This is my home now. 

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