“That one’s cursed,” said the shop girl, not looking up from her cigarette. “Three people returned it. Said it makes the room smell like chlorine and cheap glitter.”
Below it, in smaller letters: Side B still locked. Play at your own timeline.
He tried to lift the needle. It wouldn’t move. The record played on.
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. Vengaboys -Cdm Vinyl Remixes-
Leo woke up at sunrise on the roof of The Groove Merchant. The record was gone. In his pocket: a silver marker, and a white sleeve with new handwriting:
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
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. “That one’s cursed,” said the shop girl, not
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:
By A2 – “Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!! (CDM Breakbeat Nightmare)” , Leo noticed the posters on his wall had changed. A *NSYNC poster now featured five skeletons in denim. His calendar read . Outside his window, the canal was gone—replaced by a neon-drenched desert highway.
“You wanted the remixes. You didn’t ask who was remixing reality.” Play at your own timeline
Leo laughed and paid eight guilders.
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.