Writing Challege - 7 - Take Me Home, Country Roads

My dearest love,

First let me apologize to you for not being able to meet in Angel City in May, as you know my work takes me to strange places and I was called away just before I departed. I hope that the messenger I sent was able to see you and explain what happened. IF not, please accept my deepest apologies.
I write today to tell you about the most annoying curse I have ever dealt with. This includes the nose wart curse that I wrote about last year and the eyes closed shut curse from a few years ago. The curse , which I was unfortunate enough to also have briefly worked like this. “Someone is cursed via a standard incantation from a dark book that I will not name here. The curse would not start right away, it would fester in the person causing them no harm or ill will. Even a inspection of the subject would not show that they were cursed. However, if that person heard a musical tune that THEY thought was really intriguing , the curse would come to life. Then every musical tune, note, hum, or song the person hears, would turn into that song that had triggered the curse.

In my circumstances I had been driving on a backroad trying to assist a person with this curse and the radio was on a local station. It was all country/western music, which as you know I do not really care for, but it is all there was to listen to. At just after noon John Denvers song “Take Me Home, Country Roads” came on. I had never heard the song before and it was very catchy.

I then felt that familiar feeling as the curse took hold. I immediately pulled over and went to the trunk of the car to grab my breaker bag. It was too late. My quick curse stopping potion had no effect. I got back in the car just in time to hear “Take Me Home, Country Roads” start up again.

The next few days were very difficult. The saying “Too much of a good thing” never applied to something more in my life then it did to “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” I got rid of all the radios, I had to avoid going into the local grocery store, how I longed to hear the muzak versions of “Girl from Ipanema” or the subtle artistry that is “Its a small world”.

Reversing this curse was interesting, as you know, most curses have a simple hook to release or remove them. The simpler the curse, the easier it is to stop. The more complicated and complex is curse is, the most complicated and complex the hook is to remove it.  But this curse was very simple but had a very complex hook to remove it.

Investigating this took time and I could not listen to anything, else it would become “Take Me Home, Country Roads” which I would not be able to ignore because it was such a catchy tune. You know that I love listening to music when I research so this put a big damper on my initial attempts for removal.

The reason that the curse was so hard to remove had to do with the way it interacted with its target. Since the thing it cursed you with, was something that you actually liked , normal rules did not seem to apply.

Eventually I came across an incantation in Smiths “ Personal Magic: A guide through the ages”. It turns out, that the curse was not a single curse, but two curses combined and placed together in the object.

The repeating and audible curse mixed with a Personal pleasure bind spell that was created to help people get through personal tragedies. The Pleasure bind spell had a very ingenious work that would find anything that the brain found pleasure in and would amplify it. The book didn’t say how long but it does imply that it is only for a few days. The repeating curse which I had seen before, was created to punish a person with words that might have hurt the casters feelings. Imagine getting into a fight with a family member and saying something regretful. Your family member then curses you with your last words and anytime you hear someone talk the only thing they say, is those words.

Somehow the caster united these two spells together so that the Repeating curse would not start till after the Please Bind spell went off. The life of the spell was extended as it only fired when the person heard music. I have no idea how long it would have gone on, but my guess is quite some time.

It was upsetting me to the point that I almost bought tickets to West Virginia, in the hopes that me knowing that I was there would stop the curse on its own.  But working with the subject I was out there to see originally, we figured it out. I simply had to Listen to the actual song “Take Me Home, Country Roads”. Not the version I heard in my head, but the same recording that I had listening to on the drive.

I was able to get the recording and sat listening to it. After it was over, we changed the radio to a random station just intime to hear the Disc Jockey say “And now let’s get Happy Together with The Turtles. I was free.

I am on a train now heading north. I hope to see you in Angel City at the end of winter, my dearest love. I continue to investigate and research the curse that cannot be named and my continued failure brings me great shame. Thoughts of you are what keeps me going and I hope that your family is well.

Till next time,

Christopher J Watson

Special Investigations - First Grade