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The Talisman: Part Two by Mark Alberto Yoder Nunez

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Photograph by Mark Alberto Yoder Nunez
From The Spider Lady and Other Short Stories and Poetry

Continued from: https://markalbertoyodernunez.blog/2019/08/14/the-talisman-part-one-by-mark-alberto-yoder-nunez/

Perhaps it was the talisman but I took my savings and signed up to join the merchant marines.  Soon I would be leaving everything that was familiar behind.  People said I was still a young man so it was a good thing to see the world.  I wrote a letter to my mother who was in the land bound town I grew up in, the place I left because I couldn’t stand the thought of always wondering what was over the next hill.  This thought had vanished when I found the open sea stretching out before my eyes.

Before I was to leave I went back to find the curio shop where I had found the talisman.  It wasn’t there.  I traced my exact steps from the pier that day when I had encountered the little shop with the beautiful, oriental lady.  I knew these little lanes along the waterfront by heart.  I tried to find the corner I turned but only found the same familiar lanes and shops.  There was no oriental curio shop.  There was no vacant shop in its place.  It was as if I had imagined it or dreamed it but the talisman was in my possession.  I had it in my inner coat pocket.  I felt delirious.  Had I been lost?  I wandered farther in surrounding areas but these places, also familiar to me, did not make sense with the memory I had of that day when I found the shop, the lady and the talisman.

     With the merchant marines I traveled the world over and over.  I realized the dream of mine to visit the South Seas and the Orient.  This was only after many a cold journey in Northern waters to places like Finland and Sweden.  I enjoyed England, France and the Mediterranean.  My first storm at sea was the most incredible display of the power of Nature, beyond my imagination.

     When I finally was bound to the South Seas of the Pacific and the Orient beyond I was overjoyed at the leaping dolphins in the sparkling blue waters.  I was amazed by the flying fish skimming over the waves amid bright reflections.  There were the hot, summer nights so balmy with the iridescent glowing spots of mysterious night fish.   I felt in a wonderland.

And then there was the Orient.  I found myself wandering down streets and narrow lanes in Hong Kong and Shanghai.  These were places I had heard of and read about and I was there.  It was like hundreds of Oriental curio shops.  I was surrounded by them.  Mysterious Oriental men, mysterious Oriental women and children.  The children looked intently at me as I went walking by with mysterious little smiles on their upturned faces.  When I went to sleep at night I thought of the dream I had when I first acquired the talisman in which I felt I was lost in a foreign land and could not find my way back.  I did not however feel anxious about it as I had when I dreamed it.  I was living my dream and everything was as it should be.  I knew I would be able to find my way home or at least I thought I was sure of that.

     I tried to stay in the Orient for as long as I could but my contract with the shipping company that had brought me there required for me to continue on to India and Africa.  In fact I was to circumvent the globe returning to the cold Atlantic and ending my journey on the east coast of America.

From there I spent time traveling and living in parts of America I had not known before.  I had many adventures and fulfilled a dream of visiting the East coast and learning of it.  However since the only way I could make my living was as a sailor I had to find a ship that needed a hired hand.  Soon I was on my way to parts unknown.  From Norwegian fjords to tropical atolls, from cosmopolitan cities to farming communities I satisfied my curiosities about the world and the people in it.

      Everywhere I traveled I met the most beautiful and interesting women.  Sadness came at last when I thought how none of my love interests stayed in my life.  I wrote many romantic letters.  I gave significant gifts.  I had happy memories but in the end they all turned bittersweet.  The more I loved a woman, the more fleeting she became.  When I thought of all the possessions I had lost along the way in my travels curiously the talisman had always remained.

Continued on: https://markalbertoyodernunez.blog/2020/02/16/the-talisman-part-three-by-mark-alberto-yoder-nunez/

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The Spider Lady: Final Episode

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The Spider Lady
by Mark Alberto Yoder Nunez
From The Spider Lady and Other Short Stories and Poetry

     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/

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the spider lady: episode three

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The Spider Lady
Excerpt

Continued from: https://markalbertoyodernunez.blog/2016/05/12/the-spider-lady-episode-two/

     I didn’t receive this taxi call again.  One night when after I got off work and got home about three in the morning I sat down in my canvas, director’s chair and started sipping on a beer.  I did this when I came home from work just to unwind and think about all the things that happened that day.  I often called taxi driving condensed cream of life.  One night of it was that intense.

     As I thought about all the amazing things I had experienced that day on the job I thought of “the spider lady” as I had come to think of her.  A poem came into my mind.  A very short poem but I felt compelled to write it down.  Perhaps I was on my second beer but my mind in the subdued lighting of my apartment where I was contemplating seemed to be in the darkness of the universe and I wrote down the poem:

                                 She turns herself into a spider

                              And spins a web

I don’t know why I felt compelled to write it in my notebook or why so few words seemed so important to write down.  I sat and my thoughts wandered to other things.

     One night at the end of the taxi swing shift some of the taxi drivers were congregated in the dispatch office to pay their lease money to the company after the bar rush was over.  A young woman cab driver who was known to be a lesbian said something because the conversation had come around to talking about the spider lady.  Other drivers had done deliveries to her, also.  The young woman cab driver’s friend, Janice, was there.  Janice was a friend of hers from college.  They had been on the women’s volleyball team together.  The taxi dispatcher on duty was a lady named Norma, a petite blonde woman who worked the graveyard shift.  She was one of the most skillful and crooked of dispatchers.  The young lesbian woman started talking about the spider lady.

     She said that the woman was a poetess and she was well off because of the sales of her poetry.  She said that her poetry was really weird and that it sold well in the San Francisco area.  She said that she knew about this because some of her friends knew about the woman and her poetry and recognized her name.

     They asked me why I called her the spider lady and I told them the story.  They loved the story and when some of the men cab drivers coming off of their shift walked into the office they told them that I had a great story about the woman that I called the spider lady so I repeated the entire story.  The men cab drivers who had many cab driver stories of their own were impressed.

Continued on:

https://markalbertoyodernunez.blog/2019/08/31/the-spider-lady-final-episode/

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The Spider Lady: Episode Two

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Spider Lady

Description: “An older woman tries to cast a seduction spell on a young taxi driver who tries to break her spell with poetry in this creative non-fiction work of horror and mystery.”

The Spider Lady: Continued from: https://markalbertoyodernunez.wordpress.com/2016/04/25/the-spider-lady-episode-one/

The next time I got this call everything seemed as the
previous time. I pulled up behind the old car in the driveway
thinking the same thoughts, that she must drive this car even
though it always appeared as if it never moved. I walked along
the front porch to her door, the dark green, waxy leaves of the
vines to my right. She asked me to come in the same as before
and I waited on the same couch with its ornate looking
cushions as she went to get her checkbook.

As I looked about me, seated on the couch, examining
everything very critically I thought that nothing was worn,
everything seemed perfect but everything seemed old. The
horrible smell came to my nostrils again. The smell kept
growing stronger. I wondered where the smell had been
before. I looked at the open sheet music on the piano. I
thought to myself that the music I was looking at must be
weird, depressing, classical music. I realized everything was
set up. Everything that was happening was well planned. This
was only obvious.

I kept smelling the smell, trying to analyze what it could be
and why it was here in this weird and cluttered but pristine
looking place but the only thing I could think of was that it
smelled like Death. It was warm and stuffy. I just wanted to
get outside, away from the smell. She reappeared, wrote out
the check and I was released to go outside.

I walked outdoors. The fresh, sweet, summer night air
seemed intoxicating. It was very dark. I walked along the
corridor with the ivy to my left. I thought I felt more lucid
because it seemed cool compared with the warm stuffiness of
the house when suddenly there was a pale, ghostly stickiness
and a gauzy halo all around in my hair. I was still walking and
reflexively threw up my arms and hands realizing I had walked
right through spider’s webs. I was scared. I walked more
quickly sweeping away spider’s webs from my hair, neck and
shoulders, afraid there might be spiders on me. I swept the
back of my neck and down into my shirt collar. As I reached
the steps I was thinking over and over how it could be possible
that I just walked along that porch and along the same path and
on the way back there was so much spider’s webs. I thought
how could a spider spin so many intricate, gauzy webs so
quickly. The spider’s webs weren’t old and dusty. In fact they
smelled fresh.

As my feet were placed firmly on the pavement of the
driveway I felt young, confident, lucid and virile. I walked
towards the taxi, observing it and walked around the back of it
examining every detail to make sure everything was safe and
normal. Everything seemed safe.

I opened the door of the taxi and proceeded to get in,
stepping in with my right leg and sliding my body on the seat
while my left foot was still on the ground. I reached my left
hand to pull the open door closed after me when I saw it!
There was a black spider, the size of the palm of my hand on
the cuff of my shirt sleeve looking right at me, directly into my
eyes. It wasn’t fuzzy at all but had a smooth body that was
completely black. Thinking without words in an instant
because there wasn’t time to think with words I realized I had
to move left, out of the taxi, for fear of brushing off the spider
so that it would fall into my cab where it would run and hide.
Then it could attack me later as I was driving. I was afraid the
beast would run up my shirt sleeve and attack me. I moved
instantly to my left to push myself up and out of the taxi and to
brush the thing away. As soon as I moved at all to my horror
the large, black spider instantly raced up my arm at lightning
speed, still looking directly into my eyes with a passion
resembling extreme anger. I brushed with hand and was
vertical with all my weight on my left leg, pulling my right leg behind me from the vehicle. The spider had disappeared.

I wasn’t sure where it was. I was convinced it had fallen
outside of the cab as I stood in the now cooler but still warm
night. I got scared and started brushing all around my hair,
neck and shoulders, all over my body and started looking
around me. I decided to be logical and with the interior light
on and with my flashlight I inspected everywhere to make sure
the horrible beast wasn’t inside my cab. Still not sure, I pulled
the cab out and resumed my night shift. No spider attacked
me. I left the interior light on for awhile.

Continued on:

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

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