One night, a collector named Elara found a pristine copy in a damp cellar in Brussels. The sleeve was slightly warped, the vinyl a deep, marbled brown. She took it home, lowered the needle onto side A—and the factory inside the sleeve whirred to life.
But the album was cursed.
The album was called by a one-hit-wonder band from the 70s named The Fudge . They’d recorded it inside an abandoned Nestlé plant in Switzerland, using only the sounds of machinery: the clack of molds, the hiss of tempered steam, and the thump-thump-thump of a refinery stone grinding sugar into silk.
The Chocolate Factory Album was no longer an album. It had finally become what it always wanted to be: a factory that needed a worker.
Not in a demonic way. In a sticky way.
She licked it.