$25.00
I matched with REG A BOT on Venus, and the moment I stepped off the landing pod, I regretted everything. The sky wasn’t just orange—it unburned, like molten copper poured backward. The planet smelled like sulfur and burnt plastic.
He waited at a café of fused helmets, cassette torso spinning slowly: Ake You Own c60. He handed me a copy and whispered: “Insert it. It’s our soundtrack.” The tape hissed, and I felt it crawling into my sinuses, a warm, sticky pressure like molten butter.
By Side A, I noticed short-lasting sinusitis. My nose clogged instantly from the sulfur-rich air. It hurt—cheeks swollen, forehead pressing inward—but I thought it would fade. He laughed, and each laugh vibrated through my skull like tape being spooled inside my head.
Side B was worse. The cassette spoke in multiple languages at once, overlaying static with backward screams: “Side B is all breakups.” My sinuses, now inflamed, burned hotter than the Venusian winds. Chronic sinusitis set in as the air thickened with ash and smoke; my nasal passages were nearly fused with the tape itself. I could feel every groove, every magnetic particle, scratching against mucosa.
He offered me “Venusian wine,” molten metal in a goblet. I drank; the heat spread, and the tape inside my lungs began recording my screams. Antibiotics? Medicines? Nasal sprays? None could reach the magma that had claimed my chest.
When he kissed me, the cassette spooled down my throat. My face swelled grotesquely, sinuses and skin fusing, turning into a living tape deck. Side A played my panic; Side B looped my screams. I realized: the tape was eternal, my sinuses permanent instruments. Acute sinusitis had become a chronic, irreversible symphony of pain.
By the time I tried to escape, the planet itself seemed to pulse in sync with Ake You Own c60. Fire rained like applause. My nose leaked molten phlegm. He smiled, cassette grin widening: “Congratulations. You are now Side C.”
Review:
⭐☆☆☆☆
Tinder dates should not involve literal burning, nasal remodeling, or becoming part of a limited-edition cassette. Acute sinusitis will go away on Earth—but on Venus, it mutates, loops, and becomes part of the soundtrack.
Edition of 1, unduplicated.