"I Work at a Storage Facility. Unit 103’s Lease Has Never Expired" Creepypasta

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This creepypasta is for entertainment purposes only

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
I work nights and a storage facility on the edge
of town, the kind of place nobody really notices until
they need it. It's a squat little compound tugged between
the back end of a shuttered strip mall and a
drainage canal that smells worse in the summer. Most of
the thorescent lights hum or flicker, A few don't bother

(00:22):
turning on at all. The vening machine in the office
takes your money, but won't give you a soda unless
you hit the right spot on the side with the
heel of your hand. The job isn't convocated. Lock the
gate at eleven, unlock it at six. Walk the rose
once or twice during the night. Make sure no tweakers
are nesting inside an unlocked unit. The cameras are mostly active,

(00:46):
the alarm's work and when they want to. If anyone asks,
the answer is always the same. Nobody's supposed to be
here after dark. I've had co workers on and off.
They don't stick around, teenagers, burnouts, paroyees working off court
ordered employment. They come and go fast enough that I

(01:08):
don't remember their names. Management doesn't seem to care who's
on shift, so long as someone fills out the log books,
and nobody burns the place down. There's only one real
rule here, and it's not in the handbook. Don't mess
with Unit one oh three. Old padlock on the door,

(01:28):
heavy enough to stop a crowbar. The records flagators do
not access. No one opens it, no one rents it,
not officially. Still, every month there's a payment, always cash,
always exact, no return address on the envelope. Some months

(01:49):
the envelope isn't there at all. Doesn't matter. The ledger
gets updated, paid in full. Far as I can tell,
Unit one O three's been here longer than the company
that runs this place, maybe longer than the building itself.
The email came in on a Monday night, one of

(02:12):
those generic corporate blasts from some office far away. All
units must be accounted for by the end of the quarter.
Visual confirmation, inventory checklist, photographic evidence, the usual box ticking
to satisfy some one's spreadsheet. I scrawled through the list,

(02:32):
already knowing the answer before I asked. Still, I brought
it up during our weekly call with the site manager.
What about one O three? There was a pause, then
my manager's tone shifted just enough for me to catch it.
Skip it, don't log it. You don't want to mess

(02:54):
with that paperwork. Just trust me. That was it, end
of discussion. Later I brought it up in the break
room with one of my co workers, a guy whose
name I hadn't bothered to learn. Just chatting between rounds
of walking the fence line. I mentioned something about unit

(03:15):
one O three, half jokingly. He stopped chewing his sandwich.
Don't even say the number out loud, he told me,
no laughter, no follow up. He packed up his lunch
and went back to sweeping out an empty unit without
another word. I started paying closer attention after that. Little

(03:39):
things caught my eye. Locks on units that hadn't been
opened in years looks as if they had been freshly handled.
Scratches on one O three's padlock, new ones gouged into
the old metal. I knew nobody had the keys, not
even me. That's when curiosity started digging in. Not a

(04:01):
question of why anymore, just a question of when i'd
stop looking and start doing. On slow nights, I started
digging through old records. There was a much else to do.
A few battered filing cabinets sat in the back office,

(04:22):
stuffed with faded contracts and receipts going back decades. Most
of it was routine lay payments, auctions, and unit transfers,
but not one O three unit. One O three had
been listed in every set of records I could find,
including those pre dating the current building. I found paperwork

(04:46):
dating back far enough that the company name on the
letterhead no longer existed. Handwritten leases renewed over and over
different names in the documents, but none of them sounding real.
Elsie's dissolved fifty years ago. Banks that folded in the seventies.
Some of the signatures barely passed for handwriting at all,

(05:09):
jagged scrawls, cymbals, loops. A few were signed in red
ink that it bled through the pages. Beneath one looked smeared,
as if the ink hadn't been allowed to dry properly. Still,
the payment never stopped. Every month, without fail the ledger

(05:30):
marked paid, no account overdue, no notices sent. The hallway
light started going out next, first thickering, then shorting entirely.
Maintenance came twice, replaced the bulbs and checked the wiring.
Both times the lights failed again. Within the week. The

(05:53):
rest of the building stayed fine. I started losing track
of time during my shifts, waking up from what felt
like less sleep and more like a trance, always standing
in the same place, halfway down the hallway facing Unit
one O three. I couldn't say how long I'd been there, minutes, hours,

(06:16):
just staring at that dented metal door with its rusted
padlock hanging loose on the hatch. One night, I knelt
to check the gap beneath it found something wedged there,
dry cracked pieces of something curled in on themselves, too
small to be cloth, too fibrous to be bone, not

(06:38):
organic exactly, but not quite anything else either. I flushed
them down the breakroom toilet, thinking it was something that
needed disposing of, but later I couldn't shake the feeling
I should have kept them. Co workers started complaining after that,
scratching noises from inside one O three, shuffling sound, something knocking,

(07:02):
slow and steady from within. Management's response was flat rats.
They said, don't ask again. Management stopped responding to my questions.
I stopped asking, not because I didn't want answers anymore,

(07:23):
but because I wanted proof something undeniable. I started watching
one O three more closely. Every night of my rounds,
I checked the dust patterns across the concrete. The grime
in this place settled thick, but around one oh three
it moved fine layers swept into spirals. Smears stretched toward

(07:47):
the door frame, as if something had dragged itself forward
on hands or elbows. Footprints showed up when no one
had walked, always leading to the door, never away. The
smell grew worse by the week, not the sharp stink
of mold or decay, something colder, wet concrete left too

(08:08):
long in standing water, burnt metal, rust, blooming under damp stone.
It hung in the air even when the wind cut
through the rows of unit, heavier near one o three
than anywhere else. One night, in the back of an
old maintenance manual, I found a log book I hadn't

(08:29):
seen before, torn pages, scribble notes. Most of it was
routine bulbs replaced, doors, free hung, pest control visit. The
final entries stopped me, called, written in shaky block letters
across the last page, it's not what's in there, it's

(08:52):
what it thinks it's keeping out. I waited for someone
to step in, and manager and inspector, even another faceless
corporate email reminding me not to ask questions, but no
one came. No one seemed to care. However, I gained

(09:13):
a new understanding, or at least the theory to work with.
The rule wasn't about keeping us safe. It was about
keeping it undisturbed, about leaving it unobserved. Containment through neglect,
watching it gave its shape. Thinking about it gave it weight.

(09:33):
And now I had been paying attention for far too long,
too late to go back to ignoring it. So I
went about trying to fix it. One night. After locking
the front gate and double checking the cameras, I grabbed
a pair of bolt cutters from the tool locker. Walked

(09:55):
the rose like I always did, except this time I
didn't stop at the end of the hallway. I went
straight to one O three. The padlock looked heavier than
it was, old steel, scaped with rust. It gave way
on the second squeeze. The metal snapped clean through, falling

(10:17):
to the ground without a sound. I pulled the door open, slow, careful,
expecting something worse than what I found. No body, no
monster waiting in the dark, not even the expected black
voids stretching off into nowhere. Just the stowage unit, concrete walls,

(10:41):
metal shelves bolted to the sides, coated in a thick
layer of undisturbed dust. In the center, a chair, wooden
plane set face in the back wall. Nothing sat in it,
nothing crouched behind it, No stains, no scratches, no signs

(11:03):
of violence or ritual or anything else my imagination had
been feeding me for weeks. I felt disappointed, ashamed, almost
all that paranoia for an empty room. When I tried
to close the door again, it didn't fit the frame.

(11:24):
The whole door frame had shifted, warped slightly outward, bent
to the edges, metal flicked out from the concrete. Simply put,
it no longer closed all the way. I remember the
door being air tight. This half inch gap wasn't something
I'd simply missed in my observations. Still, I had to

(11:47):
close it. I jammed on the old lock and twisted
it to look untouched, knowing others avoided one O three
on their shifts. It started slow. A week after I
opened one oh three, other units began unlocking themselves, not
kicked open, not broken into just a jar, barely noticeable

(12:11):
unless you were paying attention. A door hanging an inch
off the latch, A padlock dangling loose, already been secure
the night before. Inside, things didn't make sense. TVs left
behind were still warm to the touch, their standing lights
blinking in dark rooms with no power connection, fridges humming quietly,

(12:35):
lights flickering behind cracked doors, foods sitting on tables, untouched
but far too fresh. For how long these units had
been sealed, Each one felt paused, suspended in the exact
moment their owners stepped away. Time bent around those thresholds.

(12:55):
Minutes passed strangely when I stood in them. Watches ticked slowly,
phones refused to keep signal. I reported it, of course,
locked everything, photos, serial numbers, detailed notes on the oddities.
Management responded with the same tone they used for one
O three, forced calm, thin smiles, tight voices, unit shifts.

(13:22):
Sometimes they said, locks fail, These things happen. When I
pressed them, asking why none of this was in the
manuals and why there wasn't a protocol, they only grew quieter.
Reassurances fell flat. Stick to the rounds, keep your head down.

(13:45):
They sent a guy from maintenance to re lock the doors.
He worked, without comment, without hesitation, locked everything up, and
left with a nod, as though this was routine. As
of this was exactly what he had been hired today do,
although he never saw that Unit one O three was
actually unlocked as he avoided it, presumably by instruction from management.

(14:12):
The message was clear, ignore it, leave it alone and
its days manageable. Poke it and things get worse. That
was the rule. Ignorance kept it docile. Attention made it restless.
But that was the problem. I couldn't unsee what I

(14:34):
had started. I couldn't unthink it. I had let something stretch,
and now it was pulling at the seams of the
whole place. I had been curious I had gone too far. Still,
I told myself I could fix it. I could put
it back the way it was Seal one O three,

(14:56):
relock the others, return the building to its quiet, decaying routine.
I thought maybe if I moved fast enough and showed
I understood the job now, it would let me. That
was the only plan left. Fix it, put everything back
in its place. When alone, I went back to one

(15:20):
O three with a new lock in hand, heavier, this
time in dust your grade. I drode fresholes, set new brackets,
and reinforced the frame where it had walked When I
sinsed the lock shot. It felt solid, secure. By the
next night, it had bent itself open again. The metal

(15:41):
twisted outward at the edges, straining against bolts. I knew
I had driven clean. Nothing dramatic, no noise, no spectacle,
just quiet pressure until the steel gave way. I tried again,
different lock, a different bracket, more reinforcement, the same result.

(16:05):
The door refused to stay closed. Management knew I did
not even need to tell them. They called me into
the office at the end of my shift. No warning,
no explanation, just the text from the manager's personal phone,
Come to the office, bring your keys. The lights were

(16:29):
already off when I got there. Only the hallway bulb
still burned, buzzing faintly against the silence. I half expected
the door to be locked, half expected to find nobody
waiting for me at all. But the door swung open
as I approached. Inside, the manager sat behind the desk,

(16:51):
hands folded over a Manilla folder that bore no label.
He didn't gesture for me to sit, didn't offer a drink,
just watch me come in and close the door behind me.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke, do you
know why you're here, he asked at last, his voice quiet, measured.

(17:17):
I shook my head. I kept my hands on my keys.
Part of me wondered if this was the end of
the line, if I had looked too closely, pry too far,
if they were going to walk me down to one
O three, unlock the door and shut it behind me.
I imagine you think you've been clever, he said, breaking into

(17:39):
one O three, trying to fix what you don't understand.
He opened the folder. Inside were papers I didn't recognize,
my employee file, maybe a list of incidents, security logs,
photos of me on my rounds, standing too long outside
wrong doors, opening the wrong locks. We warn people for

(18:03):
a reason, The manager said. That unit stays closed because
ignoring it keeps it quiet, like a dog that forgets
the bark if no one is around. Attention stirs it up,
Curiosity wakes it, Obsession makes it stretch. He closed the
folder with a soft tap of his fingers. Most people

(18:28):
can't help themselves, they believe eventually, or they're removed. You
lasted longer, You showed patience, You followed the pattern. You
didn't just break the rules, you tested them. I felt
my throat dry out, so what happens now, he smiled,

(18:53):
not cruelly, almost kindly. Think of it as a promotion.
He pushed a new set of keys across the desk
toward me. Not just for the gates, not just for
the office, A ring of keys I didn't recognize, keys
that had weight to them, keys that belonged to things

(19:15):
I haven't seen yet. This place needs a caretaker, people
who understand the rhythm of things, People willing to watch
the locks and turn them when they stop holding. It's
not an easy job. It's not always clear what you're
keeping out or what you're keeping in. He leaned back

(19:36):
in the chair, still watching me with that calm, unreadable expression.
The manager slid the folder closer to me with one finger,
nodding for me to open it. Inside wasn't just my
employee file. There were other names, other dates, a list
of people who had come before me, some I recognized

(19:58):
from the old maintenance logs found buried in storage. Each
entry ended the same way, reassigned containment, oversight. No resignation dates,
no severance details, just that flat final note. You're not
just getting a promotion, the manager said. You're inheriting something,

(20:23):
a responsibility that doesn't end, not until it passes on again.
He stood stretched slowly, tired, bones cracking in his shoulders.
In the dim light. He leaned towards me. I got
a better look at his face. He looked young, but

(20:43):
wore old features. Age eroded on him in layers. This
building doesn't exist a store furniture or paperwork or people's junk.
It exists to hold things in one. O three isn't special.
It's just the oldest. The others are newer, less settled.

(21:05):
But they all need attention. They all need caretakers who
know which doors to leave alone and which ones are locked. Twice,
I look down at the folder. Some units have been
reclassified over time. The numbers changed, the locations shifted, but

(21:26):
the patterns were there, always a handful, growing, restless at once,
always the same kind of person brought in to notice,
to intervene. If no one does the job, the doors
won't stay closed, he said. When one opens, the others follow.
You saw it yourself, You started the chain. You're the

(21:49):
only one who can put it back the way it was.
I asked the question hanging at the back of my throat.
What if I leave? He smiled small. I couldn't tell
if it was pity her amusement. People don't leave. They

(22:10):
either lock the doors or join what's behind them. He
picked up the folder again, tapped it twice against the desk,
like closing the lid on a box. You've lasted longer
than most. That tells us you understand, or you will
soon enough. He showed me to the door. The hallway

(22:34):
stretched out ahead, quiet as ever, the keys heavy in
my hand, too late to pretend I hadn't earned them.
I walked the facility alone that night, the new keys
called in my hand. The rows of units stretched out
under dead fluorescent light, the air hanging heavy with a

(22:57):
faint scent of dust and damp concrete. I thought at
first it was my imagination, the way my breath fogged
in the air, even though the night wasn't cold enough
for it. But the further I walked, the colder it felt.
The stillness wasn't right. Doors hung open where they shouldn't,

(23:19):
not wide, not broken, just a jar, a fraction of
an inch ear a full handspan there, locks dangling loose,
some fall under the ground without a sound. Lights flickered
behind those doors, Televisions burst faintly in empty rooms. Something
inside breathed in time with my footsteps, slow and deliberate,

(23:44):
though nothing moved in the spaces beyond the thresholds. No
shapes waited in the dark, no faces pressed into the cracks,
just open doors waiting. I understood it wasn't about monsters
hiding inside. It was about the act itself. Doors opened

(24:07):
too long, invited attention, left and checked. They invited worse.
If I didn't close them, someone else would pay the
price for my hesitation. So I went to work. One
by one, I closed them, checked the seals, turn the

(24:29):
locks using the new keys until they clicked shut, locked
each one in the ledger with slow, steady handwriting, Lock Ledger,
Lock Ledger. No answers waited for me, No final reveal
of what I'd been keeping in or what might one
day slip free, just the cold repetition of the task

(24:52):
I'd inherited, a rhythm as old as the building itself.
Lock Ledger, move on to the next. Years went by
without me noticing, or maybe noticing didn't matter anymore. As
soon as I was proficient at the job, my manager disappeared,

(25:16):
just stop showing up to work. I saw a letter
from upper management simply stating that I was the new
acting manager. The job never changed, but I did. My
bones ached in ways they shouldn't. I slow to adjust,
joint stiff. Some mornings I sat too long in the

(25:38):
chair at the desk, staring at the log book, unsure
whether I'd finished the shift or was about to start one.
They told me he was stress or lack of sleep.
Maybe I believed that if I wasn't still young enough
to know better. I watched the new hires come and go.
Most treated this place as a pit stop, a few

(26:01):
months of easy nights, just enough money to bridge the
gap to something better. They talked about future plans, schools, promotions, travel,
anything else. Some lasted less than a week. The long
hallways got to them, the way sound carried when it shouldn't,
the way certain doors seemed to breathe if you stood

(26:23):
too close. They all left in the end, they always do.
Somewhere along the way, I started slipping missing things. Locks
were undone for longer than they should have been, units
shifting without my notice. I doubled back on rounds and

(26:44):
find doors opened behind me, though I just walked past.
I told myself it was age catching up that made
it easier to explain, easier than admitting. This place was
draining me, pulling something from me a little more each year.
Then came the new hire, young, quiet, observant in the

(27:10):
way that made me weary. I caught them lingering too
long in front of one O three, asking the wrong questions,
running their fingertips along the locks like they were looking
for something hidden beneath the rust. I recognized the lock.
I remembered wearing it one night. As they clocked in.

(27:33):
I handed them the round sheet, casual as I could manage.
Don't bother with one O three. I told them, trust me,
just keep the doors locked. That's the job. They nodded,
said they understood, but I knew better. I'd said the

(27:54):
same thing once and still found myself standing with bolt
cutters in my hands, stared at a door that would
not stay shut. Now I wait, wait to see if
they'll listen, or if they'll open it. Wait to see
if they'll end up in this chair with my keys

(28:15):
on their belt, wondering when the ache started and why
the clock ticks so slowly here. Hopefully maybe someone else
can take this from me, that I can finally leave,
whatever leaving means but I wonder what happens to me
when that day comes, where I'll go, or if there's

(28:38):
a door somewhere waiting for me too,