Spellbound: a Tale of Magic, Mystery & Murder

by Louise Ann Barton

  THIS MANUSCRIPT IS STILL CURSED

  Contrary to what your local fortune teller may say, nothing can remove a curse. Much like fervent prayers, curses do not simply go away. They may be sidestepped, however, by either turning the curse back on the sender or changing the conditions under which it is effective.

  Once cursed, completed chapters of this manuscript, when saved to the hard drive, either bounced off into the ether or refused to print. Soon, it became impossible to save to either disc or hard drive. Worse yet, any disc, drive or printer that tasted the manuscript would mysteriously self-destruct. Over time, the curse forced this manuscript through four computer programs: DisplayWrite 1, PFS Write, Microsoft Word, and, for a brief time, Corel WordPerfect.

  Those who believed in my ability to finish the manuscript kept encouraging me, while I desperately sought a chink in the magical barrier. To my reasoning, if the manuscript passed rapidly through a series of different computers at different sites, the curse would need time to catch up. But this would necessitate retyping the entire manuscript one last time.

  Since libraries make computers available to the public, the curse was dumped on them. Even though libraries maintain contracts to repair and replace equipment, the damage left in my wake was becoming embarrassing. Worse yet, freshly purchased, initialized discs still refused to save.

  It was not until the protection spell for