GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: THE CRYSTALLINE VOW

The Crystalline Vow

They say when you’re dying, your life flashes before your eyes. But mine won’t stop replaying just one night—one scream, one blade, one name I still whisper in dreams. I broke a vow I never made, and they killed him for it. Now the crystal is humming again, and I don’t think I have much time left. So if you’re reading this, listen closely—because once I tell you, it won’t just be my secret anymore.

I never told anyone—except Tommy.
He’s the one I turned to that night, all those years ago.
And he's been dead for ten years now. I’m not far behind. My lungs are shot. Stage four. Too many Marlboro Lights sucked away my breath, and too many secrets I swallowed for too many years turned to tumors.

But this one—I need to get out, before I go.

It was 1983. I worked the morning shift at a little coffee shop in Mohawk called The Cozy Nook—back when jukeboxes played records and everyone smoked indoors.

He used to come in every single day. Tall. Quiet. Black robe. A long brown beard and those beautiful green eyes that somehow always looked like they already knew something terrible. Nikolai was a Russian monk from the Orthodox monastery up the hill.

He wasn’t like the others. Forced into the cloth by his family, he’d once wanted to be a doctor. He was well-read, well-spoken, and handsome as hell in spite of those damn robes. He loved two eggs on a hard roll for breakfast, grilled cheese for lunch, and endless cups of the Cozy Nook’s watered-down coffee.

At first, I thought he was just lonely. But then I realized he was curious—and afraid.
He’d come from further east, from Albany, and the isolation of the monastery didn’t sit right with him. He asked strange questions about the town, about the Herkimer diamond mines, and about land records he couldn’t access. He’d bring ancient books—scrolls, even—written in Russian, the kind that smelled like ash and parchment.

One day he told me:

“It’s not a monastery. It’s a lid. And it’s starting to hum.”

We fell in love—quietly and carefully. The townies who came in for coffee in the morning didn’t like him or what he represented. That Cold War, anti-Russian Reagan-era garbage made one of them bold enough to say:

“Hey sweetheart, you aren’t bangin’ that commie, are ya?”

You’re damn right I was.
He was going to leave the church for me.

We had a plan. To get out of Mohawk. Out of New York. Out of that valley that always felt like it was hiding something.
We were going to Connecticut to start over.

We spent our last night together at my place.
He said it would be our beginning—but I think we both feared it was the end.

Nikolai kissed like a man who had read too many books and lived in silence too long—gentle at first, then desperate. There was nothing saintly in it. No sin. Just two people clinging to something real before the world could take it away.

Afterward, we lay in bed tangled up in each other.
He reached into his satchel and pulled out a small crystal—clear as glass and jagged like a broken tooth. Said it came from beneath the monastery. Said it sang when he touched it. At first I didn’t hear anything. But he swore it had a voice.

He pricked his thumb with the edge and let a drop of blood fall onto it.
The air around us shifted. Like pressure in your ears before a storm.
The crystal hummed—not loud, but deep. In my chest. In my teeth.
The lights flickered. And in the mirror across the room… something moved.

Nikolai didn’t speak. Just stared at the crystal.
And for the first time since I met him, he looked afraid of something he understood.

I picked him up the next night just after midnight.
He said he had something to show me—documents he’d stolen. Proof of a cover-up.
He was scared. So I drove faster when a car pulled up behind us.

That car became our undoing.

It pulled alongside us like a gator circling prey and forced us down a dirt road turn-off. One of the men in the passenger seat rolled down his window and blew a whistle—high-pitched, inhuman.
Every window in the car shattered.

In a hail of glass and panic, I swerved into a ditch. My head spun. My nose bled. My ears rang like a bell tower.
Nikolai was bleeding too, but somehow still clear-headed—he shoved the documents under the rug just before they arrived.

Two men stepped out—twins. Big, clean-cut, farm-boy types in their early twenties.
They moved like they’d rehearsed it.

One ripped Nikolai from the car and started punching him.
I screamed, my hearing starting to return, but my skull still buzzed from that awful sound.

The other grabbed me. I fought back, reaching for Nikolai, but they pulled him from me like a rag doll.
The twins chanted—something I still can’t remember.
Then a fist crushed into my stomach and dropped me to the ground.

As I gasped for air, I felt a needle prick my neck.
I tried to scream—but the paralysis bloomed too fast. My body went limp.

But my eyes still worked. And I watched as they stabbed him, again and again, with a blade made of crystal that sang when it split flesh.

Their chant grew louder as blood sprayed my face.
I couldn’t feel any of it.

I woke up on my kitchen floor.
With blood on my shirt that wasn’t mine.
The twins were there—calm now. Standing over me like it was a job well done.

One of them placed the blood-wet crystal blade on my kitchen table.

They told me their names were Alex and Eric.
Said they weren’t monks, that they were his keepers.

They said he’d broken his vow and he was going to sacrifice me—and they saved me.

But I could live.
If I shut up.

I didn’t trust them and I sure as shit didn’t believe them.

My brother Tommy was a cop. They knew this and dared me to call him.

He showed up with a shotgun and vengeance in his eyes.
But when they handed him a file—marked with Russian stamps and Pentagon sigils—he went pale.
He shook their hands.

And we all agreed: No report.
No autopsy.
No record.
No choice.

Just silence.

For over forty years, I’ve kept it.

But I still have Nikolai’s notebook. His ring. His files.
And the piece of quartz he called a shard of the footstool of God.

Because those bastards never checked under the rug.

That night ruined me.
I never married. Never had children. Barely touched another man.

They didn’t just take his life. They took mine too.

It took me nearly ten years to even look at the documents. And when I did, I didn’t understand them.
I didn’t want to. So I buried them in the attic and tried to forget.

But some nights… I swear I could hear that crystal humming. Just like he said.

And now, with one foot in the grave and the other in the furnace, I don’t know what’s real anymore.

Funny how death sharpens everything—just in time for it to mean nothing.

I’m leaving it all behind now. The ring. The shard. The truth.
For someone smarter. Someone braver. Someone who might care.

But more importantly—someone who might listen.

Because it’s humming again.

And I don’t think that monastery is closed.

Art and story by Hal Hefner.
Produced by Catmonkey Studio