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.
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:
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: Vengaboys -Cdm Vinyl Remixes-
Below it, in smaller letters: Side B still locked. 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.
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 elevator in his building began to ding,
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.
He tried to lift the needle. It wouldn’t move. The record played on. They only danced—a jerky, stop-motion dance that cracked
