A few months went by and I didn’t hear anything concerning the spider lady.  A little after five in the afternoon one day I got a call at a doctor’s office.  I had never been there before.  I was impressed when I read on the sign that was next to the door of the office that it was a woman doctor who was a naturopathic doctor.

     A very pretty, young, brunette woman who was close to my own age at the reception desk smiled.  She seemed especially friendly and cheerful.  She said she would go get the person who called for the taxi.  She returned and smiling she said, “She’ll be just a minute.”  There were women and children in the waiting room.  Then I saw her in the semi-darkness of the room approaching me.  It was the spider lady.  She was wearing a long, dark print dress.

     I went to open the back door of the taxi for her and she said she wanted to sit in the front so I opened the front passenger door for her.  As we were riding along I thought how strange that we were riding in a car together with daylight all around on a warm, sunny afternoon with a touch of coolness in the air.  She seemed calm, patient, relaxed and humble.  She was gazing off into space.  She sat in her long, dark print dress with her arms resting on her lap.  Her wrists and hands were placed just above her knees, her palms up.  Her fingers were delicately curved as if she was posing in a peaceful, serene and beautiful position.

     Then I saw it!  On both of her wrists were plastic, stick-on bandages.  I kept looking in disbelief while she remained calm and serene.  She was gazing into the distance ahead with slightly lowered eyelids as if in a surreal state of melancholy and peacefulness.  I looked again at the bandages in exactly the places on someone’s wrists where a person would slash with a razor blade to commit suicide. 

     I looked at her face so calm, serene and transcendent.  Except for glints of light that reflected from her eyes as we drove along she seemed motionless and in a state of relaxation.  It seemed as if she had wanted me to see her bandages.  She wanted me to know. 

     When we were on her street and getting close to her house she asked me to stop a few houses away from hers.  She said she wanted to walk the rest of the way.  I offered to get out and open the door for her but she insisted on letting herself out.  She reached for the door handle.  She seemed listless as if drugged.  I patiently pointed to help her find the door handle.

     The afternoon just before sunset was in a golden glow as I watched her walking ahead of me with the skirts of her dark, elegant dress swaying while she walked past the yellow and green lawns of the neighborhood towards her own home.  She walked with sadness and serenity as if introspective.  I never heard anything of the spider lady again.

    I remembered I had told the cab drivers and dispatcher that no such spider that is completely black with a smooth, hard skin of that size exists in this area that I’ve ever heard of.  It was larger than tarantulas which I have seen in Arizona and tarantulas are furry and brown.  Was it just a spider?  Where did those webs come from on the porch that I had just walked through?  What was that smell of death?  Did she practice evil magic and lure men to their death, murdering them in the belief that she could gain power from death like a female spider that seduces males to have sex with her and then devours them?

When I read in a magazine about how a man turned in Jeffrey Dauhmer, the serial killer, to the police because of smelling an unusual smell that made him think of death and then he looked into Jeffrey Dauhmer’s bedroom to see bed sheets covered with caked, dried blood it reminded me of the smell in the spider lady’s house.

     Did I break her magic spell by writing a verse of poetry?   Did she use poetry for evil, magic purposes to cast her spells and did I defeat her unwittingly because of being a poet myself?  Was her seduction spell over me that important to her that when I used her own medium to break her spell she attempted suicide?  Or is the writing and publishing of this story the final breaking of a spell that may have gone beyond the grave?  At this point I know there are people who practice magic, both good and bad. 

Continued from:

https://markalbertoyodernunez.blog/2019/07/24/the-spider-lady-episode-three/