Nico's Rare Records

Not all music is created equal - A fantasy horror story for Vinyl lovers

Artwork by

Shelby Alexander

Inside WhatThouWilt Records, Nico lifts the arm on her beloved Rega Planar six turntable and gently releases the tonearm with a twist of her intentionally gothic hand. As always, she waits for the record to stop before lifting it from the floating glass platter. Between the palms of her cotton-gloved hands, she holds the edge of the record, lifts and tilts the vinyl to precisely 33 degrees under the zero-UV sunlamp. Her grey-green eyes check for scratches, dirt, or imperfections on the single 527m, 0.04mm groove, cut nearly sixty years ago in the legendary recording studio of the sadistic German hard folk producer, Nix Neilsen.

Nico was obsessed with details. She could tell you the name of the engineer who manned the lathe on the day the record was cut. The make and length of the eight-track tape used for the mixdown, and who was playing the xylophone on track three, but fell out with Nix and never received his credit on the gatefold sleeve: Jimmy “Fingers” Fish, if you’re interested.

This record was rare, truly rare.

As far as Nico knew, it might be the only surviving copy of Limb Salads’ historic Berlin recording “Old Folk Got Dope”. The day after they finished the record, a tram hit lead harmonica and soprano Gillian‘big lips’ McCrooner in front of the pretzel stand on Alexanderplatz on January 11th, 1968, around 11:42 am. Music critic Donovan Gershwin described the record as “the wet dreams of a pre-punk agro folk sex pest on an all-night absinthe bender”.

Nico loved it, but that was never in doubt.

“It’s flawless.” She said to a hopeful-looking Dillon, before sliding the black vinyl into the dust sleeve and handing it back.

“But do you want it?”

Nico breathes in deeply, as she always does before letting them down, “It’s rare, but the market for progressive German folk is…complicated.”

“But what’s it worth?” said the pot-marked Dillon, holding the record out hopefully as Nico slowly removed her cotton gloves and lowered the clear dust cover over her beloved turntable.

“Nothing!”

“What? Why? You said…” whined Dillon, as visions of the two grams he’d promised ‘Bus-stop Lucy’ dissipated before him.

“It lacks something.”

Dillion blinks, confused. “Lacks… Lacks what?”

“The devil is in the details, if you know what I mean.”

“Eh?”

The tinkle of the bell over the door interrupts their discourse. In the doorway stands Vincent, extraordinary in his ordinariness. Beige chinos, a plain white t-shirt, and bland, comfortable trainers. In his arms, he’s clutching his dad’s black lacquered record box. He’s sweating and wheezing.

Nico’s head flicks up, eyes wide with anticipation. “You ran?”

“Yes,” pants Vincent. “You’re busy. I’ll wait outside.”

Nico shakes her head, making her long, jet-black curls tumble over her shoulder onto her faded, original ‘Junkie Logic’ 1999 Bag Licking Bitch tour t-shirt.

“We’re done.”

“Come on…?” Protests Dillon.

Nico’s eyes, now cold, slate grey, slow blink, leaving Dillon with a sudden urge to be in sunlight.

“I’ll leave this here… you can have it… crap anyway…” Dillon staggers backwards, trips over his feet, twists, scampers, then pushes past a confused Vincent in the doorway. Gasping for air, Dillon falls out of the shop. The heavy door slowly closes, pushing the prostrate youth into the street and returning the room of rare vinyl to near darkness.

“Is he ok?” Vincent tries to look through the window, but he can see nothing, though the layers of band stickers that cover the glass.

“Did you bring it?” Nico’s eyes are wide and bright in the darkness, like they are backlit, spotlighting Vincent’s black box. Vincent wants to say something, but she blinks, and he is in darkness again. A trick of the light, a reflection?

“Come…” Nico curls her white, wand-like index finger slowly. Vincent feels a faint scratch under his chin, like a nail filed paper-thin, razor-sharp. He touches the stubble; his finger comes away red from the sharpest of cuts.

“What the…!”

Nico raises her angular eyebrow.

Vincent doesn’t move. “Look, this has been a bloody weird day, and I have questions.”

“Questions are good,” Nico says with her warmest smile, the one she reserves for special occasions and family funerals. “Iced tea? It’s my dead mum’s recipe.”

“Er… yeah, thanks,” Vincent walks tentatively down the aisle between the two rows of vinyl, leading to the shop’s transept. Nico watches from her improvised altar, complete with a record player, candles, and what looks like a jar of cookies, or hands, but probably cookies. As he came closer, the thousands of eyes trapped in an endless wave of band posters that cascaded up and over the table watched him approach.

Seemed to watch him approach.

Vincent looks from painted face to screaming mouth, wide eyes, bright eyes, crying eyes, denim and leather and feathers, dresses on men, men on dresses, women on men, women as men, men as boys, there was no variation unvaried, no idea not realised, no colour not used in the posters that surrounded Nico.

“Do you like them?”

Vincent stops. Nico is watching him, her smile a consistent feature in the ever-fluctuating room.

“Who?”

“My bands.” She sweeps her black lace-covered arm, revealing scars, or perhaps tattoos, or tattoos of scars, that etch fractures over her porcelain skin. “Beautiful, no?”

“Er…sure! Look, I..?”

Nico spins away to retrieve a large jug of syrupy brown liquid from the mini fridge beneath her table. Ice cubes clink against the glass as she works, and Vincent, released from her gaze, takes in the full extent of WTW Rare Records.

The shop is no more than a covered alleyway between two other buildings, a negative space created by an architectural miscalculation during the widening of Crowley Lane in the ‘60s. The undulating roof could be asbestos, but it was impossible to see because of the vast number of posters pasted to it. Images of long-forgotten festivals, bands, and gigs poured down the walls, meeting the two parallel lines of record bins. Vincent didn’t recognise any of the bands: ‘Empty Temptation’, ‘Creepy Disco Cult’, ‘Sword Glove’, ’Tofu Cow’, ‘Trauma Sisters’… it was a musical parallel dimension. The touch of ice-cold glass against his hand snapped Vincent back to the dark reality.

Eye to eye with Nico, he felt closer than he had ever been to anyone.

Far closer than he ever wanted to be.

His body pulled away, his feet stepping back, but finding the racks of records suddenly close, penning him in.

“Sorry!” he said, not knowing why, shaking his head to clear his mind. “This place is…weird.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. WTW Rare Records is a singular entity; we specialise in the rarest of rare records. The last resting place of the world’s most obscure and eccentric performers, a gathering of the strange, macabre, and… dangerous, all safely stored in my little shop.”

There was so much to unpack in that sentence, Vincent didn’t know where to begin. Nico smiled again, and his urge to dig deeper dissipated.

“Look…er…”

“Nico, we spoke on the phone. You’re Vincent, with...,” her eyes flicked hungrily to the black record box still clutched like a security blanket to Vincent’s chest. “…the unusual record.”

“Yeah, Nico, look, how did you know my father again?”

“Well, just to be clear, I don’t think I knew your father, but I know the record you mentioned, and I’m as interested as you to know how it ended up at your parents’ house.”

“My dead parents’ house…”

That smile again, disarming, gentle, like a scalpel, “I’m sorry to hear that. Was it sudden?”

“Yeah, in a ‘yesterday, they were celebrating their 50th anniversary, and today the house is empty and all I have is this record and a post-it note’, kinda sudden.”

“Oh, so not dead, just disappeared…”

Vincent tries to read Nico’s face, to see if she was hiding something, lying, subverting, or deflecting, but he might as well be trying to decipher a blank page.

“No…” Vincent places the black lacquered record box between Nico and him on the counter. Nico steps forward, her hands twitching, fingers uncurling to grasp at it. Vincent notices the movement, which Nico attempts to disguise by drumming her perfectly manicured nails on the scarred counter. She was effortlessly beautiful, like a gothic Mona Lisa, and that wasn’t helping Vincent focus on the matter at hand.

He cracks open the case and retrieves the Post-it note from within, then snaps it shut. He offers the note to Nico, but rather than taking it, she lowers her black pointed glasses from the top of her head and reads it instead.

“Ah…!”

“Yeah, Ah…! Sorry, son, we are dead. Take this to WTW Rare Records, ask for Nico. She will know what to do.” Vincent looks expectantly at Nico, and for the first time since he arrived in her shop, Nico looked uncomfortable.

“Do you?”

But only for a moment.

“May I see the record?” Nico holds out her now-gloved hand. Vincent hadn’t seen her slip the white cotton gloves on, but on his list of weird things that had happened in the last 24 hours, it wasn’t even top ten. Sweating again, he cracks open the black box and draws out the record in its plain black cardboard sleeve. His hand was shaking enough to make the vinyl rattle against the wood. He offers it to her across the counter, covered in the faded logos of hundreds of unknown bands.

Nico licks her lips. Her eyes go orgasm wide but her hand is rock steady as she grips the record. She pulls, but Vincent doesn’t let go.

“Who the hell is ‘Swedish Death Clean’?” asks a nervous Vincent.

Nico can’t hide the sharp intake of breath, the excitement overriding her gothic demeanour.

“They were an experimental super group founded by Hedda Hornyson, the Norwegian lead singer of French Jazz Goth quartet, ‘Verve Cliche’ and the guitarist Devlin Moroe of ‘Trauma Sisters’ fame. They had a few line-ups over the years, but I believe the five musicians that recorded this album included the drummer Vinnie Stixx, from the notoriously violent ‘Highwayman Whiplash’.”

Vincent blinks in confusion. “Is any of that supposed to mean something to me?”

Nico gives the record a firm tug, and it slips from Vincent’s sweating fingers. Like a 10th Dan DJ, she expertly separates the sleeve from the Vinyl and has the record on the deck in one smooth motion. She switches the turntable on and it silently spins up to thirty-three rpm. Her hand hovers over the arm lever, ready to lift.

“You are Vincent, Vincent Junior, yes?” The slight tilt of her head drew Vincent in.

“Er… yeah… my father’s name was…”

“…Vincent, or better known as Vinnie Stixx.”

With that, she flicks the lever, and the arm gracefully swings across the gap and lowers itself ceremoniously onto the record. A deep, solemn rhythm builds. It comes from far away and rolls over them. Vincent could feel the music as much as hear it.

“My father… was a cobbler, he worked at Timpsons on the high street, he hated music. This makes no sense…”

“That’s what they all say, but every band still has a drummer. Just listen to that syncopation. It’s as intricate as anything he did on Whiplash’s ‘Mumma grew a hanging Tree’, or ‘Black Cape Crooning’, but without the Brazilian influences, I think he got those from your mother.”

“What! My mother came from Chipping Sodbury!”

“Yes, but back in her youth, she was in the all-girl Samba-Core band ‘Cornershop Tequila’. She was pretty wild. They met at The Hope Springs Eternal festival, where ‘Swedish Death Clean’ headlined, for the one and only time.”

Vincent’s head was reeling. The music kept building around him, and he struggled to think. The sounds were increasingly oppressive and dark. Nico swayed to the melody wrapping itself around Vincent’s throat. He tried to speak but could make no sound against the onslaught of the heaviest guitars and harpsichord he had ever heard.

“Just anyone can’t make this music. To get here, to be this good, to work at this level, you have to make a deal with a devil. Not the actual devil; he only buys blues these days. No, any devil will do as long as they are into your sound. Jazz devils, Folk devils, Metal and Rock…they all like to rock. Their twisted minds force musical styles together, creating bastard children that they unleash upon the world, hoping to create havoc.” As Nico talked, the music forced its way into Vincent’s head, through his ears and his mouth. He tried to close his eyes, but the treble forced his lids wide, and his eyeballs convulsed by the bass. His hands clawed up his face to cover his ears, but the violent mids ripped his fingers back, twisting them, leaving his ears wide and bleeding as the abrasive notes grated away his eardrums. Nico leaned over the counter, continuing her presentation as Vincent curled and convulsed, his heart beating in time with the fractious offbeats, friction building, his blood heating. He tried to scream, but the sound wanted in, not out and filled him entirely.

“Shania Twain, Crazy Frog, Limp Bizkit, Ed Sheeran, all devil music that made it into the open to wreak havoc. Here, I store the ones that never found a home and keep them safe from harm. When it’s time for the musicians to pay their debt, one of my records goes on a little trip. It was exciting to hand-deliver it and meet the drummer of Highwayman Whiplash. Your dad was hot for a drummer.”

Vincent falls to his knees, his hands gripping the counter, his eyes bulging, tears of blood mingle with shiny mucus spittle, the only thing able to escape from his mouth. Nico’s beautiful face peers down at him.

“Your parents have paid back their dues and sadly gone to the great concert in the sky to play out eternity doing Leo Sayer covers in some devil’s bar… probably… I mean, I don’t know, but I find having some sort of mental image really helps the loved ones come to terms with everything. Have you heard enough?”

Vincent, now blue, his vision closing in, stars blinking out as eternal darkness rushes in to envelop his soul, nods once. Nico nods and disappears for a second, then the sound stops.

Vincent lies gasping on the floor. He wipes his sweat-covered hair from his bleeding face, but clumps of it come away in his hands. He tries to stand, but one leg has broken, the pain so distant in the confused mess of his brain he doesn’t realise until it cracks under his weight, the bone ripping through flesh and chino. Nico grabs him with one hand, offering the re-sleeved record out with the other.

“My leg…?”

“This is yours. The music has power, genuine power. Be careful with it. I wouldn’t listen to it with headphones on! Your father died to make it; you should treasure it. I know I would.”

Vincent stares at the black record. How did he get here? Less than 12 hours ago, he was sipping champagne in his parents’ garden with his wife, and now all he had left in the world was the worst album he had ever heard, a broken leg, no hair and a banging headache.

“I… don’t… want it…” croaked Vincent.

“Oh, Okay, if you are sure?” She holds it for a moment.

“I’m sure… I’m fuckin sure… this is sick, you’re sick…”

“Hey, don’t be rude! I’m doing the world a service… You had questions, now you have answers. I never made a deal with a devil. That was your mum and dad.”

“My Mum…?”

Nico smiles that smile again and, in a perfectly gothic pirouette, grabs a blood red single from the shelf over the counter. “Yeah, have you ever heard Samba-Core? It’s wild!”

Vincent backs away from the beautiful, enigmatic Nico, her disarming smile reaching out to him, daring him to stay. He puts weight on his broken leg and screams in agony. He falls against the records, his hands plunging deep into the boxes. His arms disappear and he can feel the blackness sucking him in. He throws himself backwards, falling to the floor and twisting and screaming in panic. He is dragging his twisted, bleeding leg behind him. Gasping in pain, he pushes against the door, but it refuses to budge.

“LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LETMEOUT!!!”

“It’s a pull door, Vincent.”

Weeping, gasping, bleeding, Vincent flops hard onto the floor, grasps the wooden leg of the table and pulls himself away from the door. He rams his nails into the wooden frame and grips hard, pulling the door with all the life he has left. Slowly, it opens a crack. He slides his twisted, broken fingers into the light. Screaming with fear, eyes blurred with pain, as the disconnected bones in his hands slide against torn ligaments and pulped hands push the door slowly open.

From the end of the aisle, Nico watches in awe, genuinely impressed. Vincent has inherited many of Vinnie Stixx’s attributes. He was well known for playing through the pain barrier during all-night sessions. It’s a shame he hadn’t followed in his parents’ footsteps. She would love to hear the music this perfectly tortured soul could make.

“Don’t be a stranger.” Nico laughs as Vincent falls out of the door of WTW Rare Records and crawls into the sunlight.

Artwork by

Shelby Alexander