I've Got a Record Player That Was Made in 2014

“Nostalgic? I don’t know if I’d call myself nostalgic,” Mary Darling said as she twirled the coiled cord of her vintage rotary phone around her finger. “It’s more that I just don’t feel the need to keep up with the times here in my little playroom. Why thank you, Ducky. I’m older than I sound though, or look. Lucky for me, my brother’s a mechanical genius. He keeps all of our old appliances working good as new. Even better than new, most of the time. Yep, he’s the one who refurbished the jukebox you’re calling about. Just shy of a decade ago, if I recall. Well, he’s sort of a professional. He’s self-employed, so he wears a few different hats. Reselling his gizmos isn’t a huge part of his business, but I can assure you it’s well worth our asking price. Well of course you can come over and see it for yourself! Wait, where are you? Oh, fantastic! Grab a pen, and I’ll give you the address.”
Less than half an hour later, Mary heard the cheery ringing of the doorbell at the lobby’s front door. It would have been impossible for her not to hear it, since she was already there, leering out the peephole. The lanky man on the other side of the door wore a bright sports coat and dark sunglasses, with a Rolex Submariner watch mounted conspicuously on his right wrist. She imagined he was a wheeler-and-dealer of sorts, likely looking to flip the jukebox for a profit.
She liked that. It meant she could take her time playing with him. If he was there to rip her off, then he wouldn’t realize that he was the victim until it was too late.
The man rang the doorbell again, becoming slightly impatient. Mary let a few more seconds pass before opening the door.
“Ah… Mrs. Darling?” he asked, looking her up and down in confusion.
“Yes, hello! You must be Mr. Simmons. Please, come inside. No one should be outdoors in this awful haze,” she said was a broad smile as she held the door for him, keeping it between herself and the outside world as much as possible. “I blame the hippies. All these forests they’re so crazy about are nothing but a fire hazard! If we chopped them all down and made them into asbestos-stuffed model homes, then we wouldn’t have to worry about forest fires, now would we?”
“I’m sorry; you’re ‘older than you sound’?” he asked incredulously. “Kid, if you were born before 9/11, then I’m King Chuck’s Groom of the Stool.”
Mary tossed back her head and gave a throaty laugh that Simmons found performative.
“Well, I guess I’m just an old soul in a young body,” she said, still smiling widely, her overly white teeth and blood-red lips looking like something from an old magazine. “Lucky for you, Ducky, the jukebox has aged every bit as well as I have. Come inside and you can see for yourself.”
His eyes looked her up and down once again, lingering briefly on the kitchen knife handles sticking out from the sash of her dress. Deciding that they were as innocuous as a carpenter’s toolbelt, he stepped across the threshold.
Mary pushed the door shut, sighing with relief when she heard it click, the world that was not under her control safely held at bay.
“That’s better. The air really is awful out there,” she said, taking out a cigarette from a silver case and igniting it with a golden zippo lighter. Taking a deep drag, she slowly blew it out all across the room. “It’s so much nicer inside.”
“You can say that again,” Simmons remarked, gazing around in awe at the ornate Art Deco lobby he had unexpectedly stumbled into.
“You don’t know the half of it. The damned Home Owner’s Association is very particular about what the exterior of the house has to look like,” Mary claimed. “Looking too nice drives everyone else’s home values down as much as being too ugly, apparently. It’s the hallmark of the mediocre to resent another man’s accomplishments.”
“Sure, sure,” Simmons nodded, doing some math in his head to try to figure out how what he was seeing now could fit into what he remembered from outside. “And this is your house? It looks like the ground floor of a luxury apartment complex. I mean, that’s an elevator, isn’t it?”
“That it is! Custom-made. No one but my brother could have installed an elevator in this house,” Mary boasted proudly. “No need for us to use it today, unfortunately. The jukebox is in the billiard’s room, which is just down that hall.”
“Oh, well… after you, then,” Simmons said with an awkward gesture, suddenly finding himself uncomfortable at the prospect of turning his back on his strange hostess.
Mary gave a slight curtsy and set off down the hall, with Simmons trailing a safe distance behind.
“You seem a bit nervous,” Mary remarked. “There’s nothing to worry about, Ducky. My brother doesn’t mind me having gentlemen callers over. I’m the possessive one in our relationship. Whenever my brother brings another girl through those doors, you better believe that it doesn’t end well for her.”
She gently pushed open a pair of doors at the end of the hallway, revealing a spacious and well-appointed billiards room. The carpet was a deep red, the walls lacquered wood, and stained-glass lamps hung from the ceiling. The room contained a bar globe, seats, a sofa, a fireplace, a dartboard, a cards table, a billiard table, a Cigar Store Indian and, of course, the jukebox.
“Hmmm. Classy man cave you’ve got here,” Simmons commented as he strolled into the room, stuffing his hands into his pockets to avoid inadvertently touching anything.
“I believe a classy man cave is referred to as an Andron,” Mary said. “It’s not a wholly accurate description, in either case. My brother does use this room predominately for entertaining male guests, but it, like everything else in our home, is ultimately still under my domain as the woman of the house. And it’s certainly not a sanctuary for him. Why on Earth would he ever need respite from me?”
She tossed her head back and laughed again, and Simmons responded with a forced grin and chuckle.
“Yeah, your, ah… brother, sounds like a lucky man,” he said with an awkward cough. “That’s him in the portrait above the mantle, is it? He looks just like you.”
He inferred that the young man sitting next to Mary in the portrait wasn’t just her brother but a twin brother, as they shared the same striking black hair and blue eyes. Sitting in front of them was a nine- or ten-year-old girl who he assumed had to be a younger sibling, as aside from her dark eyes she looked just like them as well. He briefly considered the revolting possibility that she might somehow be their child, but dismissed it when he decided the math didn’t work out.
Then again, it wouldn’t be the first time since he got there that the math seemingly didn’t work out.
The most unsettling thing about the portrait, however, was a blackened figure standing behind the twins, possibly emerging out of the wall. He had two beady, glowing pinpricks for eyes, an arm around each of the twins, and a manic, shark-like grin on his face.
“Yep, that’s our whole happy family right there,” Mary beamed as she walked over to the bar globe. “Why don’t you go over and take a look at the jukebox for yourself? I’m feeling the siren song of the sauce calling me. I think I’ll make Manhattans. Would you like one?”
“Ah, no thank you. I’ve got to drive,” he said as he made his way over to the other side of the room, glancing over his shoulder to make sure she wasn’t up to anything.
“That’s why I never bothered to get a license. Driving’s not amendable to the charmed life of a day-drinking housewife,” Mary remarked, taking a swing from the whiskey bottle before pouring it into the cocktail shaker. “I do drive the convertible around the grounds for fun sometimes, but I’d be a public menace if I ever took it out on the streets. At least here I’m only a menace to our guests. And… kerplunk! A cherry makes it healthy.”
She smiled as she plopped a cherry into her cocktail glass and then a second one into her mouth.
“I swear; cocktail cherries and the tomato juice in my Bloody Marys are the only things keeping my diet balanced, since apparently good old-fashioned corn and potatoes don’t meet the left-wing health nazis’ gruelling standards for what doesn’t count as gruel! I do like asparagus, mind you, but most of my vitamins come from organ meat. Meat’s really much healthier and easier to digest than plants since it’s already so close to our own bodies; and the closer it is, the better. Kidneys and livers are the original superfood; more nutrient-dense than any vegetable. Of course, I love my prime cuts more than anything. Unfortunately, I’m all out at the moment.”
Simmons had stopped paying attention to her rambling shortly after her admission of being a day-drinking housewife. His attention was instead on the prize he had come to collect; the jukebox.
“My, she is a beauty,” he said as he ran his hands along the rounded top, shivering slightly at the feel of the flawlessly smooth surface. “You weren’t lying about the condition. This is mint! And it still works?”
“Of course! There’s a bowl of quarters just beside you there. Plunk one in and let her rip!” Mary urged him. “It’s got a full complement of one hundred 45 rpm records inside. Try to fit that into an iPod! And I mean the actual records. I know an iPod can hold more songs than a jukebox.”
“No, you’re right. You couldn’t fit a hundred forty-fives into an iPod,” Simmons chuckled.
He dropped a coin into the machine and watched intently as the fluorescent tubes flickered to life with a subtle yet insidious hum, their deep red glow casting a hellish pall over the entire room. Without bothering to look at the musical selection, Simmons punched in 69, and listened eagerly to appraise the quality of the sound.
Several seconds passed, and he heard nothing. He strained his ears carefully, eventually picking up the sound of what he guessed was a theremin, barely audible but gradually increasing in volume. Its pitch fluctuated rapidly in a definite pattern, but it would have been a stretch to call it a melody.
“Ah… what exactly am I listening to?” he asked.
“An auditory psychotronic agent,” Mary replied with a devious smile as she unsheathed one of the knives from her dress. “The sound induces the neurons in your auditory cortex to fire with a specific resonant frequency that spreads throughout your brain and nervous system. Real Cold War Era, MK-Ultra style mind control. They don’t make ’em like these anymore. The frequency can have any number of psychological, physiological, and even psionic effects on its victim. What number did you pick exactly, Ducky?”
“I… what are you –” Simmons stammered.
His bemused skepticism quickly gave way to confused disbelief as he felt a disorienting sensation wash over him. The sound was inside him now. It was in his head and in his nerves; his heart beating erratically in tune with its strange rhythm as his vibrating bones sent it rippling through his flesh. The florescent bulbs of the jukebox flickered in time with it as well, their red light washing out every other colour and burning out the blue and green cone cells in his retinas.
Self-preservation overriding all other concerns, he reached towards the jukebox to either shut it off or destroy it. He never managed to lay a finger on it, as the incongruent rhythm overtook him and forced him to dance along with it. He slammed his hands over his ears, but it made no difference now. It was inside him, it was him, and he could not get it out.
In a delirious panic, he looked across the room towards Mary, and saw her glowing red face framed by her abyssal black hair. She smiled a mad, manic smile, the enormous meat cleaver in her raised hand glinting in the crimson light. She began twirling towards him, dancing even though she was seemingly inured to the psychotronic assault.
Screaming, though he couldn’t hear it over the sound of the signal permeating his entire body, Simmons pushed off against the billiards table with enough force that he went tumbling in the opposite direction, his momentum carrying him back into the hall.
Or rather, he should have gone back into the hall. Instead, he was in a massive ballroom with a diamond-checkered floor and rotating, ruby chandelier. Even worse, he hadn’t escaped the music. Everything was still red, and the signal was as strong as ever. Out in the center of the dance floor, there was nothing for him to push off against to try to guide his now alienated legs.
All he could do was dance where the rhythm took him.
He cried out in pain as he felt the meat cleaver slice through the back of his leg, sending him falling to the ground. He looked up to see Mary dancing around him gleefully, dipping down to retrieve the knife before pirouetting away. Simmons tried to crawl away, but the signal inside wouldn’t let him. It forced him back up, forced him to dance on his lacerated leg.
Mary took another swing, this time penetrating so deep into the other leg that she struck bone.
Withdrawing and retreating, she watched in delight as Simmons still continued to dance on the broken leg, anguished tears streaming down his face. He made multiple attempts to punch Mary out, but she evaded his fists with remarkable ease.
“You’re pretty graceful for a drunk, you fucking bitch!” he spat at her, lunging towards her neck in the hopes of strangling her. Instead, he ended up slipping on his own blood and falling face-first on the ground, breaking his nose and shattering his front teeth on the marble floor.
Before he could right himself, he felt Mary’s knife chopping into the back of his legs over and over again as she laughed hysterically, slicing sinew and breaking bone. Screaming and cursing, he was still unable to resist the compulsion to try to dance to the rhythm on his mangled limbs.
Every time he tried to stand, he inevitably collapsed back to the floor, his legs now completely incapable of supporting him. He tried to drag himself along the floor, but there was nothing he could get much of a grip on.
And he certainly couldn’t outrun Mary at such a miserable pace.
Flipping himself onto his back, he decided he’d rather go down swinging than waste his final breaths on a futile attempt at escape. He saw her standing over him, just out of striking distance, smiling sadistically as she glared down at him. The meat cleaver, dripping with his blood, was trembling in anticipation of the kill.
“Go on then! Finish it, you psycho bitch!” Simmons goaded her.
He didn’t have to ask her twice. Her lust for violence and human flesh already wetted, she leapt at him with superhuman ferocity, swinging the cleaver sideways and slicing his throat clean open. As the blood poured down his trachea and flooded his lungs, the last thing he saw before he lost consciousness was Mary tearing off pieces of his own flesh with her bare teeth like a ravenous wolf.
***
“Mary Darling, I’m home,” James announced as he stepped into the lobby, hanging the bronze box of cryptic clockwork he used to link doorways up on the wall like it was a set of keys. He waited a moment for a response, but found that none was forthcoming. “Mary Darling?”
He sniffed the air, and immediately picked up the scent of blood. Not Mary’s blood, thank goodness, so there was no reason to believe anything was amiss. The smell was wafting out of the grand ballroom, which for some reason Mary had placed at the end of the main hall. Normally she liked to keep it on the top floor in the winter level of their playroom, as she believed it went well with the enchanting, fairytale-like vista.
As soon as James threw open the ballroom doors, he immediately spotted the mutilated corpse of Simmons lying in the middle of the dance floor. Curled up next to him was Mary; naked, caked in blood, and her stomach swollen with raw human flesh. She snored contently, basking in her triumph and utter satiety.
She looked so beautiful and peaceful, James thought, that it would be a shame to wake her. But, she did have wifely duties to attend to, and some explaining to do.
“Mary Darling,” James called softly as he gently shook her awake.
“James?” she asked as she stirred awake, yawning and stretching like a cat. “James Darling, I’m terribly sorry. I had hoped to have dinner ready before you got home, but it seems I slipped into a food coma. How was your day?”
“You first,” James insisted with a raised eyebrow as he passed her his flask of whiskey.
“Oh, thank you,” she said, taking a sip before answering his question. “Ah, well, this enterprising entrepreneur here called asking about one of your flyers; the one for the jukebox. I know I should have told him to come by when you were home, but I was at the end of my cooling-off period and I knew I wouldn’t be able to relax until I got a kill. Plus, we were out of prime cuts! Now we can have steak!”
“That was hardly worth the risk of letting in an unscreened victim while it was just you and Sara here, especially when you’ve always been able to work wonders with ground meat,” James reminded her. “What if he hadn’t just been a mere mortal? He could have been someone dangerous. He could have been one of our enemies.”
“I know. You’re right, James Darling, that was reckless of me,” Mary said contritely. “You shouldn’t have to worry that I might let any tasty piece of meat that comes calling into our otherwise impregnable playroom. You should know that Sara and I are safe while you’re out. I’m sorry.”
“Well, it all worked out for the best this time, and you wouldn’t be you if you could resist temptation,” James sighed. “But next time you’re home alone and jonesing for a kill, call me. Is that understood?”
“Excuse me; I’m the one who can’t resist temptation?” Mary asked with a salacious smile. She crawled on top of Simmons’ corpse, wriggling her butt in the air like a cat in heat. “James Darling, you’ve come home to find me lying naked next to another man. Are you telling me you’re not tempted to desecrate the bastard’s corpse and remind me that I’m yours at the same?”
James momentarily considered declining the offer on principle, but had to concede that Mary knew him too well.
“I’m not sure that’s entirely fair, Mary Darling,” he grinned as he undid his belt buckle. “You know I’ve never been able to say no to taking you on a dead body since the night we slain our parents.”
“What can I say? I guess I’m just the nostalgic type.”
Category:The Vesper's Bell