Leo found it buried in a milk crate under a torn poster of Cher. No barcode, no label art—just a plain white sleeve with handwritten in silver marker. The vinyl inside was heavy, translucent orange, with a locked groove on Side B that the previous owner had marked with a skull-and-crossbones sticker.
The elevator in his building began to ding, rising floor by floor, though Leo lived on the top floor and the power was out. When the door slid open, three figures stepped out: two women in silver bodysuits and a man with a laser pointer for an eye. They said nothing. They only danced—a jerky, stop-motion dance that cracked the floorboards in fractal patterns.
Here’s a short story inspired by the Vengaboys – CDM Vinyl Remixes — imagining the vinyl as a mystical object that warps time, memory, and reality on a summer night in 1999. Side B, Locked Groove
The locked groove was a single second of “The Vengabus Is Coming” stretched into eternity. But as the stylus hit the skull-and-crossbones sticker, the music inverted . The happy horns became a dirge. The bassline turned inside out. And a voice—not sung, but spoken—whispered from the run-out groove:
He never danced again. But sometimes, late at night, he hears a faint boom-boom-boom from the sewer grate—and the smell of chlorine and cheap glitter follows him home.
He dropped the needle on A1 – “We Like to Party! (CDM Hardhouse Remix)” — but it wasn’t the version he knew. The kick drum hit like a collapsing star. The “boom-boom-boom” warped into a sub-bass pulse that rattled his fillings. Then the vocals pitched down, slow and slurry: “We… like… to… party…” — and the lights flickered.
Leo ran to the turntable. He flipped to Side B.
“You wanted the remixes. You didn’t ask who was remixing reality.”
