Love Spells (Digital)

This tape was received at Paxico Records Headquarters in an unmarked package dated March 45th, 1944 on September 12, 2013. There was no return address. Below is a verbatim transcript of a letter included with Love Spells.

We feel it speaks volumes more about Love Spells than we could ourselves. Our investigation revealed no information on it's author, Captain Cornelius Underbelly IV. We reproduced the exact letter (with exception to one non sequitur passage) so you may be able to study it.

Clues, theories, & notes are welcome & should be sent to our return address. All proceeds fund our continuing investigation of Capt. Underbelly. Our own notes & any indecipherable passages are marked.

"What you hear today is something that cannot be fully understood without a complete disclosure of its discovery. This tape is why I run for my life today... for all I know, she'll find me before I finish this letter, I'll waste no more time. Listen:

I found the portal in late July 1987 during a ride to town. Something felt different before the bend past the Hollywock River Bridge. I dropped my bike & went into the woods ?? a quarter mile ?? greenish glow ?? large glacial rock formation. It was coming from a hare's borrow just large enough to crawl through. I'm not sure how deep ?? her laboratory. When I entered she was huddled over a cutting board. She looked up at me & turned back to her work.

?? I can feel her near. Our conversation as I remember:

-- Take a seat & make yourself comfortable, you'll be here a long time. Captain Underbelly, you are the final ingredient in a very particular potion ?? destined ?? You belong. A series of explainable cosmic events brought you to me & now we will continue this cycle. We will fulfill our obligations --

-- What do you mean? I do not know you nor do I plan on playing whatever game you're planning here. I wish to leave & will do so.t --

-- Unlikely, Captain Underbelly --

That's when I heard it. I've never felt such serenity. I shed fear from my bones, I was lulled into a state of subdued exstacy. I knew I was being tricked, but I didn't fight it. I gave it my mind. I am not afraid anymore I am not afraid anymore I AM NOT AFRA (Three pages of increasingly nonsense scribbles)

I knew it was a trap. She was using it to keep me there. I fought through visions of hazel fields & soft terrapins (Pax Rec scientists have yet to interpret the meaning of "soft terrapins"). I swam holocene oceans. I won my mind & lost it a thous& times. With a last ditch push of willpower I was able to break the music's spell & came to back in the hare's burrow. ?? flew out of her rocking chair & began to yell in toung ?? she grew smaller & more frail as I did. With all my remaining strength I overturned the hot iron cauldron, which threw her into an uncontrollable frenzy.

In the ensuing chaos I turned to find the source of that heavenly sound. ?? cassette ?? Love Spells written on it. I grabbed it & sprinted towards what I thought was the tunnel out. As I ran I heard her whispering... laughing. My escape was not so quick as my entry. I w&ered through thous&s of mirrored burrows, traversed underground rivers, & climbed stalagtites the size of mountains ?? based on my beard & hair growth to be at least four years before I found the tunnel to the outside. I sprinted home.

(Here Capt. Underbelly makes a lengthy argument claiming the divine directly inspired Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground, omitted for space)

I will abandon my former life. With her closing in on me, I only ask that you hear this. Find out how it works. Use it for good. Do not let it die with me. Do not let it be trapped once again. I am not afraid anymore. LET IT BE FREE. "

― Captain Cornelius Underbelly IV, 1996?

“Be hole, be dust, be dream, be wind/Be night, be dark, be wish, be mind,/Now slip, now slide, now move unseen,/Above, beneath, betwixt, between.”― Neil Gaiman