box filled with meat in a bag of boxes

storage unit

The floor is wet. Cold, and wet. You didn't care before; it hadn't caused you the slightest inconvenience in the eternity that you'd lain on it before. But only now that you're awake can you really appreciate just how cold and wet it is. It makes your back tingle. As you move to upright yourself, the water you'd lain in before stirs, moved from its stagnancy for the first time. You pay no mind to this, however, as your legs cry out in pain. How tiny they are, how poorly developed they are, they refuse to support you for even one second.

It takes you a great many years to stand, and once you manage this, your legs are forgotten. You look towards the walls, first taking note of the rust where the water meets them, then drifting your eyes upwards. The walls appear like iron, and are covered in many layers of dust save for where the water meets them. Occasionally, a drop of water falls from the ceiling, and even more occasionally one of those drops hits the wall instead of flying down smoothly, making the dust thinner in lines.

That is three walls, and now you turn yourself around to meet the fourth. This is when you see the door. The grand boards of wood, stone, gold and silver, and many precious gemstones. It's shiny, and it's alluring. You're tempted for but a moment to pry the shiny things off of it. But before you go through with that decision, something else catches your attention. That something is your own desire to know what's behind this door. What could it be? It could be anything. It could be anything, anything at all. You simply must see for yourself.

Ah, but there is a problem. A great problem indeed, great as this door itself. You are far too small for your longest finger to even brush against the bottom of the doorknob. You cannot possibly open it. You jump. Still you cannot grasp it. You try standing on your hands, in the hopes that perhaps your toes are longer than your fingers. They are not. You wander back to the middle of the room, and, after taking another quick look around the room, lie back down just as you were before. The water seems colder now, cold enough to freeze your bones and immobilize your joints. It doesn't though. You're okay.

For one decade in the darkness you lie. One decade and some change. Each year feels longer than the last. You feel now that you might be large enough to at last open the door.

Standing is easier than it was the first time, and you have minimal trouble making your way over to the door in no time at all. The door stirs many feelings in you, not all of them good. You don't care though, and you won't let them stop you. You reach to turn the doorknob, and your hand grasps it.

It won't turn. You only now notice that it had required a key the entire time. A key you have not, and ideas of where a key could be you have little. You wander back to the middle yet again, and this time the water doesn't feel cold, for it numbs you the moment you touch it. As you lie there, you see something you saw not before, in the ceiling above you.

The above has no discernible end, but in some seen place close enough to the ground, countless metal tubes are sprouting from the walls. Some sprout from some unseen place further above. There are many, more than you can count, winding and curling around each other in all directions. With every blink there seems to be more. Blink. Blink. Blink. There now seems to be more tubes than there are space for the tubes to occupy. How strange. What's more, these tubes are not tube-shaped, not at all. These tubes are you-shaped. Perfectly molded to your every measurement. The only being that could ever move through these tubes is you. And yet, down here in this numbing water you lie. Many fish swim around you, occasionally bumping into you. A few begin chewing the skin off the bottom of your toes.

After a sufficiently long period of soaking and being devoured, you come to the conclusion that the door must lead to the pipes above. The one place that only you can be, and the one place where you simply must be. If only you had the key. You come to the door again to try its handle, but no longer can you reach it. This door has shrunk. That, or you have grown. The knob barely fits between your thumb and forefinger. You move your eyes away from the door, and notice something quite strange. The walls have become infested by many grooves cracks, and many pieces now jut outwards a fair distance. These walls are now tainted. They are imperfect. But you can use that. Change brings both bad and good in abundance. Maybe it's not change at all. Maybe the walls were always like this and you never noticed. Nonetheless, you are climbing them now. You had begun climbing before you even made the decision to. Look out above, fool, for you have climbed to a wet place with many droplets of water. You couldn't say where climb ended and fall began.

You hear the crack, but you don't feel it until you look down at your mangled legs. They've carried you for so long, and look what you've done to them now. It's already in the past, however. Your legs forgive you. For a decade you sit in the numbing water. For another decade, there you sit. The pain has not gone away, not in the slightest, but you feel you might be able to move again. Carefully and slowly, you upright yourself, glancing  up one last time as you do. And there you see it, wedged in between two of the tubes above. The key!

But how will you get to it? You mustn't go climbing again so soon. Perhaps you could try yelling at it. You order it with all your might to drop down this instant, but it is of no use. Down here you remain, and far up there it remains. Perhaps you could knock it loose with some water. You scoop up some water to throw at it, but it numbs your hands quickly, and you drop it. You resort to pounding on the wall and crying.

After fifteen years of flailing, fifteen years of bawling, it falls of its own accord. That key doesn't even know you exist. You cried for it, and it didn't hear you. But it matters not, for the key and all the secrets it unlocks is yours now! You triumphantly make your way over to the door once more. Ah, if only the key wouldn't shake so much when you tried to put it in the keyhole. It took you so long to obtain it, and now it does this once you finally do. Unbelievable. You successfully insert the key, and move to turn the knob. If only your hand weren't so frail. So withered it is, you cannot muster the strength to open the door. You try with the other hand. It is the same. That's alright though. You weren't sure you could have opened it even if you were physically allowed to. Anything could be behind that door, after all. Anything at all. The things that aren't known scare you. Maybe it's best not to know.

You saunter back over to your spot in the middle, and lie down without pause or ceremony. The water feels the same as ever. The pipes above have grown even further in number, but now they seem to be rusted and cracked in a great many places. You close your eyes. The fish swirl around you once again, and your soft skin is left defenseless against them. You must sleep now. All you want is a good nap. You can't remember when you last slept. Maybe you've never slept at all before.