The Spyders

I’m not into modern music since

The Spyders came to town,

One of those painted-tainted groups

That you often see around,

But Anne-Marie was younger than me

And she went with every craze,

She called me a boring dinosaur

At the height of those Spyder days.

 

I’ve always been a conservative,

I don’t get carried away,

I know whatever is going down

It won’t be there next day,

The house was full of discarded things

That had lost their first allure,

The moment she saw the Next Big Thing

Come barrelling through the door.

 

The Spyder thing was over the top

I said to her more than twice,

‘They’ll be forgotten within a month,’

She replied, ‘That wasn’t nice!

Why do you always bring me down,

You’re turning into a grump!’

So I wasn’t allowed to criticise,

She put me under the pump.

 

She came back home from the hairdresser’s

With a bouffant type of style,

Sprayed and lacquered so it was hard,

She slept upright for a while.

She said that it was the Spyder look

That the girls all thought it great,

With hair like a spider’s legs each side,

Bobbing around her face.

 

I shook my head, but I held my tongue

There was nothing to be gained,

For anything that I said just then

Would bring me future pain.

The following day, she went away

And she came back home that night,

With a square of plaster on her neck

And I thought, ‘This isn’t right!’

 

She said that she’d got a small tattoo

And I nearly had a fit,

I said, ‘That’s going to be there for life,’

So she wouldn’t show me it.

She kept me waiting a week to see

The blue-black spider there,

Crawling up the nape of her neck

And heading into her hair.

 

‘How shall I ever kiss you there,’

I howled, while shaking my head,

‘That’s the end of our necking days,’

‘Oh don’t be soft,’ she said.

We barely spoke for a week back then

It was just the early Spring,

She spent her time round the roses with

Her bouffant, and that ‘thing’.

 

There’s always a lot of spiders webs

Outside, at that time of year,

And Anne-Marie must have brushed through them

And got them caught in her hair,

For days she said that she wasn’t well

That she must have had the flu,

But then one morning I woke in bed

To see that her lips were blue.

 

Her head fell back on the head rest, and

Disturbed the bouffant style,

And thousands of tiny spiders rushed

On out of her hair, meanwhile,

They swarmed on over her shoulders,

From the nest she had on her head,

But Anne-Marie was beyond it now

For Anne-Marie was dead!

 

I never listen to music now,

I turn off the radio,

Whenever the Spyder’s music’s played

On the Old-Time Late Late Show.

The band broke up a decade ago

And the lead is doing time,

He said that his skin began to crawl

With the tatts all down his spine.

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[emmajoy]

Oh my goodness.. what a creepy, scary piece of writing, David! ' Just about to take out the dogs, will be watching for webs all through the walk!

Nonetheless, this is yet another wonderfully metered piece of writing, romping through a story which could so easily be fact.. love the name of the group! Here, but as in the past, you display another side to your character (no, tisn't too warped!) because this post is full of intended or not gothic humour not the tongue in cheek style or pathos you've shown before.

[TPK Stories]

Another horrifying tale, just the kind I like to read...

[Avinash]

Your words keep us on the edge of seat from start to finish. But I sincerely pray for your leading ladies, as strange things keep happening to them. Always a pleasure to go through your work and thank you for inviting.

[Lena M. P.]

Okay, now I have to get this out of my head before I go to sleep tonight. I have been known to nearly smash my car over seeing just one spider in my car when I am driving. On the farm we used to have wood spiders as big as my hand and tarantulas double that size. But at least the big ones I can readily see. To be covered with tiny ones is a fate worse than death. This story was just too frightening. I bow to the master of spook!

[Dee]

Yikes spiders, I will be searching out cobwebs before I go to bed, just the thought creeps me out. lol.
Again a great story in the telling, with perfect rhyme and flow..and one I'll remember long after the reading ....Bravo David...Smiles..Dee

[Marie]

That's really creeppy, David. My take is that the tattoo was alive somehow and multiplied into Anne-Marie's hair.

I once heard about a mouse making a nest in bouffant hair... Now that might be a good story for me to write, or Woody, if he's so inclinef.

[TL Boehm]

NICE! I remember hearing stories about spiders in bouffant hair do's but your treatment of this is delightful. cracked up at "boring dinosaur"

[Woody]

haha this one is kinda creepy. Anne-Marie got what she deserved, I suppose.
smooth narrative and gripping tale. David's at it again.