The music shop priced its records by date. Yesterday cost almost nothing. Next month required cash. Anything beyond a year sat behind glass.
The customer came for guitar strings and left with a plain white record marked three Thursdays from now. The wife behind the counter advised playing it only once. Her husband added that stopping halfway caused complications.
At home, the record produced no music. It played his apartment instead: the radiator clicking, a kettle cooling, his own footsteps crossing the floor. Near the end came three knocks at the front door, followed by his voice asking who was there. Something answered too softly to understand. Then came a crash, several seconds of dragging, and silence.
Three Thursdays later, he unplugged the doorbell, removed the knocker, and spent the evening sitting motionless in the bedroom.
At 9:14, three knocks sounded anyway, but he did not answer.
The knocks repeated. When he remained silent, the apartment changed around him. The kettle appeared on the stove although he had never filled it. The radiator began clicking in the exact rhythm from the record. His legs carried him toward the hallway despite every effort to resist.
That was when he understood that the record had never predicted anything. It had arranged it.
He returned to the shop the next morning, shaken and furious. The couple listened without surprise. The wife explained that recordings from future dates were not recordings at all. They were masters. Once played, the world pressed itself from them.
He demanded that they destroy his.
The husband reached beneath the counter and produced another sleeve. On it was written today’s date.
The customer tore it in half.
That was when the bell above the door rang, and he suddenly found himself standing outside the shop.
Confused, he entered, and the husband sold him guitar strings and mentioned records in the back room.
The customer began screaming, and the couple exchanged a tired glance.
Somewhere behind them, a needle dropped.
©2013 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys
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