It was just another day at the office when I got it.
A link, sent to me by my friend, who was busy on the other side of the office. Naturally, I thought he sent me some link to an obscure movie, or something he found funny, but no, it was just a music video.
I listened to it. It was an okay song, nothing truly special. It was old, generic, and I thought nothing much of it, at the time, at least. Honestly, I thought the song itself was pretty terrible- and my thoughts were justified when I learned it was one of the top 50 awesomely bad songs ever.
It was kinda catchy too, and I caught myself humming the melody a few hours later- It was an earworm, yes, that was it, and no matter what I tried, I kept humming the song, over and over again.
But, by the end of the day, I’d forgotten all about it.
I returned to my bed, slept, and awaited the next day. Not that the next day would be special, just another day of meaning work, you know, going to the motions day in, day out.
I thought the next day would be a normal day- it was anything but.
I awoke sometime before the sun had risen to hear something in the distance. At first I couldn’t place it, those opening beats to a melody I could swear was still stuck into my head.
It soon became apparent that it was that song, the one my friend had so annoyingly sent me the day before- and it was being played somewhere in the distance, somewhere in my house.
“Hello?” I called, half asleep. I lived with a roommate, but I could swear she’d told me she would be out of town for at least another week.
No answer. Across the room, my pet dog lazily turned.
Confused, I began to walk outside my room, looking for the source of the song. I walked outside, and it seemed closer and closer, and soon, I was heading towards the kitchen.
It was my phone.
On top of a counter was, well, my phone- which was impossible- no, my phone had been beside my bed, on top a small drawer.
“How did you…” I murmured, looking around for a possible intruder, “get here?”
I looked back at my phone, which was playing the music video. I turned it off, ending the music- but for a second, I could have sworn it kept playing, just one more moment, hanging in the air like an unfinished sentence.
I actually chalked that incident up to my half awake state- perhaps- perhaps I accidently left it there, and I just assumed I had it beside me before sleeping due to habit.
That’s of course, when I heard it again.
I was on the bus to work, my daily commute, you see. I paid the far, got on, and sat down. I took a book, it was one I’d been reading for a while, and started reading.
And of course, that’s when I noticed something off.
I rubbed at my eyes, thinking I was seeing wrong- but no, nothing was wrong with me. I looked at the book, at to my confusion, every single page had been altered somehow, as if it had been replaced by something else-
The lyrics of the song- that’s what it had been replaced with.
As soon as I realized that, I let out an involuntary yelp, much to the dismay of the passengers around me. In my confusion, I’d dropped the book, and I swore, then locating the novel.
“You okay,” someone asked, a voice sharp, and grating, “sir?”
“I’m-” I struggled to speak, bending over to fetch the dropped book, “I’m okay.”
I retrieved the book, sat back, and opened it. It was… different now- it, in fact, was correct. No longer was it the lyrics of the music video I’d heard yesterday- but the pages of my favourite horror novel, A House, Askew.
That’s when I really began to fear for my sanity. I had hallucinated an entire novel being replaced by that music video- even the cover had been changed to a man singing wildly into a microphone.
The thing is, it didn’t seem like a hallucination- it felt real- now, seeing, or hearing a hallucination feels real, but this was different, I swear.
I finished the book as soon as the bus stopped at my work place. Me, and a dozen or so other drones of the job got out, and went back to our desk offices.
I then decided to find the friend who’d sent me the music video in the first place, but no matter where I looked, he was gone. He simply wasn’t at work, and his desk sat empty, alone.
“Hey,” I began, asking the supervisor, “where’s Sam?”
“Sam?” he replied, his tone, raised, as if there was something he didn’t want me to know. “Can’t tell you.”
Later, I found out he had disappeared. His truck was found in the bottom of a lake, and by the looks of it, it seemed as if he’d driven it inside himself.
But the weirdest part about it was that, apparently, all around his house, he had apparently drawn notes, printed out music sheets, trying to scribe something onto paper. Now, I can read music, and this is what chills me most- those notes were the opening melody for that song he sent me.
But, I didn’t know that then, and I went back to work, humming an eerie yet familiar rhythm to myself, vaguely similar to the one I’d been hearing- and seeing the morning.
And then, it was lunch.
I went to the cafeteria, humming the song as I did, the catchy- yet trashy melody caught into the fibers of my brain. It polluted my mind, injecting those uncanny words inside me.
I heard it, again, and again, and so, I decided to take a break from humming it, taking a bite from a particularly large burger.
But you see, the humming never stopped.
It was there, regardless whether I was physically doing it or not- and I very soon realized that I hadn’t been humming the song- rather, it had always been there, in the distance.
Well, now it was no longer in the distance but ever getting closer, slowly, the volume of the song increasing a fraction of a decibel at a time.
I put on my headphones to shake the song- yet as I pressed play on a song that was definitely not that one- I heard it.
Those lyrics pounded into my brain, and I almost screamed as I heard it flood into my head.
“Dude?” a coworker interrupted. “You okay?”
“I’m- I,” I hesitated, “I don’t know. I keep hearing this song, over and over again-”
“An earworm? Yeah, sucks.”
I just nodded along. Surely, if I had spoken anything else, I would have been sent to the hospital or something- and I, in my confused state didn’t want that to happen.
Instead, I decided to try something.
I took the headphones, which were now blasting loud music into my ears, and asked my coworker if she’d like to listen.
In response, she said the classical music- the one it was supposed to be, was calming, enjoyable, a touch of nostalgia. It, was not at all the song I had been listening to.
When I took it back- the song had switched- it indeed was the classical song. My coworker got up to return to her desk and suddenly, the quiet noise of violins vanished, instantly being replaced by generic synth sounds.
What the hell was going on?
I quickly took it off and ran back to my desk, running away from that evil song that simply wouldn’t give me up.
In the office, it only got worse.
My boss and a couple of coworkers asked me to join them to ask for my opinion on Project Kiflie, something I’m part of, when, well, they changed.
At least, their words did.
Because suddenly, from talking about the project, they were singing, all in a singular voice- the lyrics of the song returned, and they surrounded me. The song continued, over and over, and over, and-
“So, you got that?” my boss concluded, voice, returning back to a dreary, monotonic murmur.
“Y-yes,” I lied.
I quickly ran out of work, back on the bus. By now, the song had spread, and every whisper, every sound was now a melody, a note, a cursed instrument tormenting me for my sins.
I got off, entering my home as soon as I could.
I searched up earworms, causes- but nothing like this had ever been reported. I looked up everything, yet I found nothing to explain my condition until-
I saw the news.
An hour ago, they found my friend’s car in the bottom of the lake. And, well, I suppose I’ve already told you that. They never found him though, and they still haven’t. I, for one, can only guess that the song took him too.
In the end, I can only say this: that song is cursed, and I’d advise anyone from listening to it.
Because that song has been growing sounder and louder- it isn’t just humming anymore, no.
An hour ago, I heard these knocks at my door, and, well, I looked through the keyhole to see three men I’d never seen before. As soon as I looked, they started to sing that evil song.
So, see, I don’t know what to do next, so treat this as a warning.
Don’t listen to that song. It won’t ever give you up.