Sheffield Investment Opportunity of the Week: A Black Metal Dungeon

Like butterflies unfurling our delicate wings from the prison of our cocoon, London Rental Opportunity of the Week – the popular format one VICE commenter called "shit" and another said made him "unlike [the] [fucking] page on Facebook [because it's all shit]" – spreads its wings further afield, a 167-mile jaunt up the M1 to Sheffield, to a property available to buy, instead of rent. Up is down and down is up. Black is white and white is black. The format is still largely the same.

What Is It? A black metal dungeon;
Where Is It? Sheffield;
What Is There to Do Locally? Run your hand through the big wall-like fountain outside the train station; throw a chip into the sky, turn around and say "ey up", then catch it in your mouth; forge your own exceptionally depressing male stripper troupe; tense your bicep and say "SEE THAT, CUNT? SEE THAT RIGHT THERE? SHEFFIELD FUCKING STEEL";
Alright, How Much Are They Asking? £99,997, which may as well be £100,000, mightn't it? Just say £100,000, estate agents, you shitshows;

And so to Sheffield, home to a quite big shopping centre called Meadowhall, and the only football team in the world with the suffix "Wednesday", and a collapsed steel industry. And home, also, to this four-bedroomed terrace on City Road, which has buried deep within its bowels this mystical black metal dungeon.

Let's revel in this, shall we? Because I think we all know someone who has lived – or at least seems capable of living – in something like this. We all knew some sort of semi-unhinged anarchic metaller called Liam who had a phase during his early teens where he tried to imprint on everyone a more metal name – "Call me Raglor," he's saying, while colouring his fingernails in with a Sharpie, "It's more, like, me?" – and who grew a long, curiously thin, greasy ponytail, and who saved all the £20 notes his dad used to give him when he saw him on weekends after the divorce and put them towards a special long leather trenchcoat ordered in from America. Liam: always bringing the vibe down at parties by scratching a CD off while in full flow and putting a YouTube video of a Dreamtheater song on instead, and who always seemed capable of sleeping on this, two mattresses stuffed on an old piece of foam, no sheet, in a fucking dungeon in Sheffield. Liam was capable of this. Liam wrote "BLACK METAL" on the wall.

I think the most vital thing about the dungeon is the only semi-bleakness of it. Example: every other room of this house is largely pristine and tasteful. There is a single room with some damp in it. I am going to go ahead and put my Columbo mac on and deduce that this was formerly a student sharehouse. And then suddenly the picture broadens: four lost souls, thrown together at the end of May by virtue of living on the same floor at halls and missing out when everyone else grouped up for a houseshare, lost in this four-bedroomed terrace on City Road, with Liam.

Can you imagine the passive-aggressive WhatsApp group that sprung up about this man. "There is an extremely cheap… incense? smell coming up from his room and I'm pretty sure it is getting in the water," one person is saying. "His laptop seems to go louder than any other laptop on Earth and I think it is the awful metal music he is playing on it," another one is saying. Liam hasn't been to a lecture in three months. Liam wakes up at 4PM and puts on the exact same underwear, still in his trousers, that he took off yesterday. Liam's only mate is this solemn and silent man who seems to be about 45 and owns an irrationally excessive number of small hard dogs. "Is Liam in?" he's saying. That's all he says. His name is Tufty. He has the vibe of a man who went to prison once but won't ever tell you what for. A tattoo on his forearm that just says "LYNN". Do not ask about Lynn.

I would love to live in this house, love to. It is £100,000 and sizeable and nice and I really dig the fireplace arrangement. But would I live in it with Liam, and the curious number of empty carrier bags that litter his floor? Would I live there with Liam, Liam trying to get me to drive him to Nottingham because a band called "Piss Dolls" who do bloodletting on stage are performing a sell-out secret show there? Would I live there with Liam, long thin strands of ponytail hair clogging up the bathtub? I would not.

Liam has definitely gone down a Wikipedia rabbithole and performed some rituals in this household. He has definitely cursed the ground with salt. Do not buy this £100,000 house in Sheffield. Black metal has settled there like a pall, and it will not budge away, it will not move.

@joelgolby

More opportunities of the week:

London Rental Opportunity of the Week: Who Hasn't Dreamed of Having a Shower in Their Kitchen?

London Rental Opportunity of the Week: A Chandelier Hung Inside a Turd

London Rental Opportunity of the Week: A Mattress with Walls in Elephant and Fucking Castle