I’ve been a metal head for as long as I can remember. I would dig on less-than-legal websites for hours, looking for new and obscure bands. Back before services like Spotify existed, it was a great way to find new bands on a budget, just like cassette tapes before that. I would then later buy the albums I liked, not because I had any respect for copyright law, I still don’t, but in order to support the bands financially.
One night, while browsing a popular torrenting site, I came across a file by a well known metal band. After the name of the band and of the track in the file name there stood in all caps “BANNED TRACK - DO NOT DOWNLOAD - DO NOT SEED - DO NOT LISTEN TO!!!” Of course, I had to listen to it with such a clickbait-y title. 1 seeder. 0 leechers. Curious, it was a popular band after all with millions of fans.
Downloaded. Played. Listened. Great song. 10 out of 10. SUPER catchy. Couldn’t get it out of my head, even. Bloody earworm! After the 15th time I hummed the chorus, there appeared a sphere floating in the air, which grew and grew until it was about 1 metre in diameter. The sphere had the appearance of a shiny metal ball, which seemed to reflect everything around like a mirror. Except it didn’t reflect the things outside it, but the things inside. There was a vast desert inside, with dunes of black sand illuminated by an unnatural looking, weak, sickly green sun. I was terrified, yet intrigued. I looked at the insides from the other side of the sphere and saw different dunes. The back of the sphere. Other dunes still. It was like the thing was a hole in space-time, a kind of portal to another place. After a while, the sphere shank again until it disappeared completely.
The next day I tried telling my best friends, Jack, Tim and Fane, all about my experience. They burst into laughter.
“Hey, man, what were you smoking? We want some, too!”
“Yeah, dude, share that sweet leaf!”
“Did you also see how fairies wear boots?”
“Nah, man, I know, I know, he saw Godzilla in the kitchen!”
“No, he saw Bongzilla!”
“Bongzilla in the kitchen!”
“Yeah, what was he cooking?”
“Maybe meth!”
“No, guys,” I interrupted their mocking, “I told you what I saw …”
“Yeah, metal balls!”
“Yeah, Bongzilla was tripping balls in the kitchen.”
“Metal balls, man, metal balls!”
Both “Bongzilla” and “Godzilla in the kitchen” are pretty cool bands, by the way. Highly recommend. I wouldn’t dream of suggesting they were up to anything illegal.
At this point, I decided I was going to show them and started to hum the chorus of that song. Nothing happened. My three buddies were looking at me confused. I sang it again, louder. Still nothing. My friends were pretty uncomfortable by now. Third time, even louder. They were begging me to stop. By the time I finished singing it the third time, a little floating ball of fire appeared in the room with us. We jumped all four with surprise and fear. It quickly faded away.
“What the HELL was that?”
“Yeah, dude, what the hell?”
“Sing it again, sing it again!”
“No, dude, don’t even think about it, don’t …”
“Sing it, man!”
“You shut up over there!”
I started singing. Fane was trying to stop me, but me and the others were far too curious to listen to him.
It appeared again and after me singing the chorus tree or four more times, it grew to a diameter of almost a metre. Then the flames began to retreat to the inside of the sphere and the outside became clear, such that you could see what was on the other side. Nothing could prepare us for what we saw that night. Saying it terrified us, would be a huge understatement. It was hell. I mean, literally hell, lake of fire, demons, tortured sinners and everything.
Worse still, the ball started moving and coming towards us. We were paralysed with fear, couldn’t move. The sphere would’ve almost swallowed us whole, if it weren’t for Fane, who dragged the three of us out of it’s way. It did swallow the chair behind us, however.
That was the last time we hung out. Some found religion. Tim became a devout Baptist and Fane, an Eastern Orthodox monk. Poor Jack spent most of the time since in various mental institutions. And I became a recluse. I rarely go outside out of fear of accidentally opening a portal to some hell dimension or even the actual Hell itself again.
I don’t have to sing the curse, as I’ve come to call it, multiple time, or out loud, even. As soon as I remember the lyrics, the portal opens. And have I’ve mentioned it’s a super catchy tune? It’s never to a normal, let alone nice, place and never to the same place twice. Always some fresh horror. Just the other day, I woke up in the morning to a bunch of lovecraftian abominations cannibalizing each other on the other side of a portal. Even now, I write these words, while being watched by two of the eight eyes of maybe a three-metre large spider busy forcibly mating with another one and also eating that other one’s eyes. At least, that what I think they’re doing. Not super familiar with demon-spider anatomy.
At least it’s less terrifying than the other dimension I’ve seen just before writing these few lines. The reason, in fact, I’ve decided to write them in the first place. It was a swampy world dimly lit in a strange magenta light, almost like from a neon sign, but coming from a very dark, cloudy sky, from one barely visible blue sun on one horizon and another red one from the opposite direction. The landscape was also foggy. Around those vast swamps were shuffling about a bunch of zombies. All of a sudden, one of them approaches the sphere. I was shocked to recognize myself, and says to me in my own, though a lot more hoarse, voice:
“Your time will come, too. Very soon.”