“Okay, everyone,” she yelled, “to your seats. Do not make me say it twice! Eyes open!”
The dozen or so of us made our way to overturned pails and milk crate stools. At first glance, we all had little in common – there were teenagers, older people, parents; men, women, and all those in between; overweight, undersized… we were all here for the same reason. I looked toward the woman who stood tall on wooden pallets stacked in the center of the damp, dirty basement. A red knit scarf was wrapped twice around her neck, the color of its yarn a glitch against the military-style digital camouflage jacket and black cargo pants. A blank space on the tag where her she might otherwise write her name kept the mystery of her identity hidden.
“What’s your idea this time, Sarge?” one lanky man asked. “I don’t want a redo of that last shitshow.”
The crowd murmured in approval, and the woman in the camo raised her arm to silence the din. “Yes, our efforts last month only resulted in a lot of good people dead,” he said. “I will own that responsibility, but I will also make sure those brave souls did not die in vain. No one wants to forget them, we can do this with our broken hearts.”
Sarge paused, and the crowd remained settled. She took a visible breath, walked to a display showing pictures of people and buildings, and spun it around to display a crudely drawn map of a city with multiple colored arrows and lines drawn through the center. I didn’t recognize the geography, but why would I?
“Our intel suggests that she believes her wins last week–” she gestured to a red line drawn onto the map that slashed through an unidentifiable neighborhood “–will keep us from making any additional progress on the central assault. We didn’t lose ground on the northern front–” she gestured to the right-hand line, then to the left-hand line, both in blue “–but remain optim–”
“We don’t have the resources!” An older man, his arm in a makeshift sling, stood up. “We lost thirty souls last time! Who can push on three fronts? What’s the end game? We got nothing left!” As grumbling rose from the crowd, the woman slammed her fist on the board. Its wheels squeaked across the floor as it slammed into the wall.
Silence.
Sarge took another deep breath. “I understand. I understand the sacrifice you have made, that our friends have made, that our families have made. But I’m still a believer. I believe there is hope. I believe that hope starts in this room, at this moment, for this time. We’re all here for different reasons, and we choose to be here for all of us who weren’t given a choice at all to be part of this new hell.”
The room remained silent. The woman dragged the whiteboard back from the wall, wheels screaming against the floor as she rotated it clockwise to its original state, displaying a road that led to a superstructure flanked by multiple smaller buildings. Garden areas, tunnels, and windows were prominently labeled below three words: “OPERATION:TORTURED POET.”
“Sir, you’re absolutely right: we are low on manpower, low on supplies, low on hope. But we’re real tough kids, and we can handle our shit. What do we have now?”
She drew a giant ‘S’ across the largest of the houses on the map.
“A strategy. The great war ends tonight. Here’s the plan.”
EARLIER…..
I awoke in a room that wasn’t mine, in an apartment I’ve never seen, in a place I have no memory of visiting. My mobile phone didn’t work, there were no computers or devices nearby. Nothing made sense.
I stumbled out of the building and ventured into a city bathed in a lavender haze. The air smelled of burning mixed with the fresh rain on the pavement. The brave few who ventured into the world as I had kept their heads down with eyes averted. A car, an older model with a design as if it were created from memory, drove cautiously on the road, avoiding the more treacherous parts of the deteriorating pavement. The remaining active storefronts kept their outward appearances to a minimum, with those that chose to advertise at all displaying signage muted by the ever-present purple hue.
My attention shifted up the street, and I spied what appeared to be a small coffee joint a few blocks away at the top of a hill. I walked toward the shop, dodging vagrants and refuse and traffic. I felt increasingly less sure of where I was, of who I was, of what was going on with each step. I did my best to shake it off, but then an inescapable image demanded my attention: a banner, hung vertically at the end of a major throughway and displayed a face that shined like fireworks over this sad and empty town.
The banner was many stories tall, seemingly bigger than the whole sky, and lit up in a way that cut through the pastel fog. The image featured a green, grassy background with blue sky and her smiling face; a face that was unavoidable and unmistakable, but jarringly wrong. A navy blue cap hid most of her styled locks of blonde hair with fashion-forward clothing swapped out for military dress garb, but the propaganda unambiguously depicted a woman at the height of her villain era.
It was stunning. It was beautiful. It was confusing. It was awful. Call it whatever you want, but it left me with more questions than answers.
“Nope, no one saw this one coming. She’s just a young performer getting chewed up and spit out by the record companies, after all, right? ‘You-Know-Scoot’ is no different than any of those other venture vultures or c-suite execs. You try to squeeze every last cent out of something, and then toss it aside for the next shiny object that comes along and hope they don’t have a meltdown on Insta’.”
I took a sip of a caramel nonfat latte made by a barista in a red apron. He wore a name tag that read “Spiderboy” handwritten in rushed, smudged blue ink. He spoke in a hushed tone; his eyes repeatedly darting between my eyes and the cafe door.
“My theory is that she just finally lost it when she was coming up on 40,” said the barista as he stirred my drink. “I mean, she reinvented herself so many times. She already took over the pop music world, right? And yeah, the weird cat musical flick didn’t work out but everyone rightfully blamed Derulo and Corden for that. The tight end worked out well enough, I guess, but it doesn’t surprise me in the least that she of all people could figure out how to establish…” he trailed off before waving his arms around “…this, y’know? She basically did it anyway in the music world, right?”
Silence hung in the air. “I get it, really,” he continued, “but you need to understand. She’s not a saint, she’s not what you think… It’s like that old movie, she literally rejected our reality and substituted her own. Or something like that, I guess, what the hell do I know. I’m just some part-time coffee guy and she’s an intern–”
“So wait,” I said, “she made this?” The barista nodded. “I don’t understand, she’s just a singer. Hell, did she even graduate high school? How did this happen?”
“Yeah, it was a whole thing,” he replied. “Moving to Tennessee, getting ‘homeschooled’–” Spiderboy emphasized with air quotes “—and becoming a big-name billionaire. No, she’s not qualified, but, like, who is?”
I looked around the cafe, as old and run-down as anything else in this dying excuse for a metropolis. The amenities featured peeling wallpaper, torn and faded advertisements on the few remaining windows that weren’t boarded up, and a pile of broken chairs stacked in the corner. “So where are we, then?” I asked, breaking the silence. “Are we in Tennessee? Didn’t she buy some massive mansion in Newport or something?”
The kid behind the counter laughed out loud. “No, my dude, we’re in Wyomissing, Pee-Aye. Or at least–” the barista made a curved gesture with both arms “–’(Taylor’s Version)’ of it.”
“It’s what now?”
“Ugh, saying that still makes my skin crawl. So, remember, like ten or so years back our time, when control of her masters got sold off and she did the most punk rock thing ever and started rerecording her early albums note-for-note? Real vigilante shit, right? Well, she took that vigilante shit a step further and figured out how to bend the modern era to her will. The next thing we know, a bunch of us are transported to this parallel universe hellscape where Tay-Tay rules with an iron fist along with her three enforcers. Long story short, Miss Americana did something bad and masterminded an effort to outright break the space-time continuum.”
I took another sip from my latte. “This is ridiculous,” I said, “you know that, right?”
He laughed again. “It’s ridiculous and it’s real and it sucks for the rest of us. Us Swifties… well, former Swifties, I guess… we all knew she could be petty aye-eff, but it was always to our benefit. Yeah, she made enough money to buy and renovate her fifth home in Beverly Hills or whatever, but she also gave us stuff from the vault and epic four hour concerts. She weaponized our love and devotion.”
The silence again hung in the room, broken only by a Lover-era deep cut over the in-store speakers. I still had more questions than I had answers, and the barista chimed back in. “You know… there is a group of peop–”
He cut himself off as the bell at the front door rang. A woman, short and slender with a long face and spindly arms that didn’t look like they could handle the firepower dangling from the holsters, strode into the coffee shop. Despite the early morning chill of the outdoors, she wore a black bralette and baggy tactical pants with beefy, military-style boots. A metal badge on a lanyard hung from her neck, with a pair of black gloves on her hands contrasting against her pale, bare arms.
“You know the drill, Spiderboy,” she said as she leaned herself against the counter. He nodded, never looking her directly in the eye as he poured beans into the grinder. She then turned her attention toward me.
“You,” she shouted from across the cafe, “you look new.”
I sipped my drink.
“Not the talkative type, eh?” The woman turned her attention back to the man behind the counter. “Hey, Spiderboy, this newbie have a name?” He stopped grinding and raised his head slightly.
“I-I didn’t ask his n-name, Maj-Major,” he responded, his voice shaking. “S-Sorry.”
“You apologize again,” she responded with a theatrical sigh, “and yet you have only two jobs in this world: make coffee and get names. You’re already shit at the former, and you’re apparently shit at the latter, too.”
The barista didn’t respond, turning the grinder back on before he moved to the espresso machine.
“Spiderboyyyyyyy,” she hollered, “this is me trying to get you to do the bare fucking minimum. Are you going to make me do it, instead? Remember what happened last time?”
The barista continued grinding beans and boiling milk. The woman turned back to me, an exaggerated grin on her face.
“I get it. You just got here,” she said, “so maybe you don’t know how these things tend to go. Ignorance doesn’t get you out of the woods. Identify yourself, asshole.”
I sipped my drink again, long and drawn out, before responding: “I don’t answer questions, my apologies.”
The woman laughed. “You ‘don’t answer questions,’ huh? Trouble’s gonna follow if you don’t tell me your damn name.”
“I respectfully invoke my fif–”
The woman interrupted me with a cackle that cut through the noise of the milk frother. “Are you fucking kidding me right now? Pleading the fifth?” She removed her right hand from her glove as she continued. “My dude, there is no fifth amendment here. You have two rights, and only two rights: follow the instructions of the Queen General and answer my questions. Those are–”
“Alana,” the barista interrupted, “he ju-just got here, give him time to get his b-bearings.”
“I’m sorry, Spiderboy?” She spun away from me and rushed back to the counter. “Did I give you permission to use my name?”
“Oh fu–.” The woman grabbed the barista by the top of his apron and pulled him halfway across the countertop.
“A reminder to both of you,” she yelled, “is that I will be addressed as Major General Haim. Got that? Now, last time, new guy – your name?”
I didn’t respond; staying quiet seemed like the least worst option.
“His name, Mr. Perfectly Fine,” she yelled. “What is his name, Spiderboy?!”
“I-I don’t know!” he screamed. “I didn’t ask, I’m sorry! Please, just lea–”
Major General Haim reared her free arm back and slapped the barista across the face. The young man yelped in pain. A red glow quickly rose from his cheek and she turned her head toward me.
“Look what you made me do, newbie,” Major General Haim said as she let go of his lapel. The barista collapsed onto the counter and groaned as she put her glove back on and walked back toward me. “That will be you if you don’t comply. I will turn you into the smallest man who ever lived.”
I took a final sip of my coffee and placed the empty cup on the table next to me. “Listen, don’t treat me like some situation that needs to be hand–”
Her gloved hand connected with my face. I watched sparks fly across my vision, and a sharp tone rang from my eardrums. My jaw felt like it shifted from its spot on my skull. I thought back to when she entered the cafe, and grinned at the power of the strike despite her size and stature.
“You enjoyed that, huh? Fuckin’ perv.” She adjusted her glove, and then poked her finger into my chest. “This? It was your first and only warning, Shawn.”
She knew my name already, and she continued before I could ask how.
“The point of all this is compliance. The Queen General demands nothing less, so reject whatever false god weaseled its way into your head and obey her instead. Today, you failed your first test, and you nearly took little Spiderboy here down with you.
“Next time… well, just remember: no body, no crime.”
The Major General pushed her finger into my chest once more before pulling back. “Remember: your only warning, motherfucker: do not let it happen again, or I’ll absolutely give you something to smile about.”
Major General Alana Haim went back to the counter and picked up her coffee. She took a sip, frowned, and threw the near-full cup at the barista. On impact, the drink sprayed across his body, across the countertop, and along the walls.
“Your coffee is still shit, by the way. Fuck, I hate it here.” The woman turned on her heel and walked out of the store, her bare back obscured by a ponytail, a rifle, and thin bralette strings. The barista let out his held breath once the door’s bell stopped ringing.
“I’m Jake,” he said as he wiped himself off with a towel. “She’s not like this with everyone. I just always end up getting the ten minute version because of the other Jake. I’m sorry you got caught up in this.”
“I should apologize to you, I didn’t know–”
“You didn’t know, so no apology is needed. It’s not your fault.” He pulled a pen from a branded paper cup on the counter and wrote an address on a napkin. “I think you’ll want to go here. They meet later today. After sunset. Take back streets if you can.”
I nodded as Jake handed me the napkin and shook my hand. “Best of luck,” he said, “but at least for now, you’re on your own, kid.”
I walked back outside. The downtown area was quiet, the sound of the breeze and the chirps of birds the only sound. I looked at the address on the napkin; the cafe was across the main drag, a couple hundred street numbers away from my destination. I started walking up a perpendicular road in the event the Major General was keeping an eye on me.
The small town feel of Wyomissing didn’t disappear in (Taylor’s Version); plenty of small restaurant storefronts and breweries existed here once upon a time in a tenuous balance with their corporate-funded competition. Their signage remained in this place, but they were empty shells as opposed to bustling communal spaces; either this universe didn’t support them or those unlucky enough to be here didn’t care to run them. The houses on the side streets were similarly dilapidated, with windows and doors boarded up on most houses. Telephone poles were covered with photos of missing persons and animals. A few resistance-style posters were visible, but most of them littered the ground or stayed half-torn on the side of various abandoned buildings.
Most of the population that remained here appeared to keep to themselves. It felt like she had a marvelous time ruining everything.
I looked down the road and watched a large military-style utility vehicle, complete with a mounted machine gun, crest the hill and proceed slowly toward me. I stayed on the sidewalk, trying to act normal: breathe in, breathe through, breathe deep, breathe out, breathe in, breathe through, breathe deep, breathe–
“ATTENTION WYOMISSING RESIDENTS,” The screech of a bullhorn cut through the silence, and I jumped. Another woman in a bralette, similar in appearance to the Major General, stood through the sunroof, bullhorn in hand. “CURFEW BEGINS IN 20 MINUTES. THOSE FOUND OUTSIDE WILL BE ARRESTED. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”
I hustled past the vehicle, past boarded up houses and tiny businesses, past burned-out vehicles, destruction, despair. Then, a church on the corner of an intersection at the same address given to me by Jake. I watched as one person in a bulky jacket and gaiter looked to their left before entering a side door, and I quickly followed suit.
…NOW
“The great war ends tonight. Here’s the plan.”
Sarge pointed at a picture of a house fortified with barbed wire and sandbags. A fenced gate at the border of the driveway protected several large vehicles. The opposite side of the property displayed vines growing up the side of the house from a concrete-paved patio. The window on the second floor was circled in bright red.
“Our intelligence tells us that this is where her midnights become her afternoons. This house, her base of operations, is on what is currently referred to as ‘Cornelia Street.’ We have a unique opportunity to strike here and perhaps undo a lot of what this she’s done. It requires a lot of attention to detail, and a few opportunities to fall favorably in our direction. I can’t promise a positive outcome here – we’ve seen this film before, and we all know we didn’t like the ending – but I would argue that this tactical strategy remains our best chance yet of reversing this situation and ending our exile from the real world.”
A woman stood up. “This is insane, going directly to her,” she shouted. “Whatever mastermind plan you think this is, it doesn’t make any goddamn sense. Those fucking sisters will slaughter us. Lord, what will become of–”
“ENOUGH,” Sarge yelled, leaving the platform of wooden pallets. “You all can’t see the facts here through all your fury. We have months of intelligence now. We know what makes these people tick. Most importantly, though? We know the Queen General is getting complacent, and we know this is our time to strike.”
Sarge stopped where I sat in the back, grabbed my arm, and forced me to stand up.
“And this is the first night that we have a secret weapon at our disposal.”
The collected resistance spoke softly as they changed into dark outfits. The sergeant sat with me at a card table in the corner of the room, opposite the entrance. She unfolded a map of our dictatorial pop starlet’s compound; red crosses and arrows littered the page.
“The very first night we were all here, we believed that she was beatable. We knew we could turn this around, but tried to get fancy with it. That was our first mistake, and we lost a lot of good people as a result. I’ll be getting over those losses my whole life…”
She paused for a moment, and I looked up from the map. A single tear rolled down her face. “We have new intel, though. We have this intel because Este’s flipped. She’s on our side.”
I looked at Sarge. “Who? What intel?”
“Este Haim, kid,” she replied. “One of the three sisters, the enforcers. I assume you met Alana earlier or you wouldn’t be here. But Este’s working for us now. She finally understands what she signed up for and she wants out.”
“I’m confused. Not about the situation, but about her. Why flip? Why would she speak now? How can you trust her? Hasn’t she killed a bunch of innocent people?”
“Well, no amount of freedom really gets someone clean, true, but there were a few things she did for us to prove herself, and…”
Sarge trailed off as her eyes drifted to the wall. I turned and saw dozens of photographs with various goodbye messages underneath. A single red candle was lit on a table below the display.
Sarge coughed, and I turned back to her. “Este’s with us. That’s what matters. Tonight, Danielle is running point here–” Sarge pointed at the front of the compound’s property “–and Este convinced Alana to come with her to do a curfew sweep on the other side of town. Half of us will congregate at her residence’s entry checkpoint, the other half will hold a faux rally a few blocks away a little before 11:30. You, Shawn, are the secret weapon: Alana saw you at the coffee shop earlier today, and that’s because Este tipped her off about your arrival. Jake, god bless him, was in on it too. They assume you’ll be out and about over there at the rally, when in fact you’ll be on the inside taking out the snake.”
Our table was quiet. After a few moments, I spoke. “Let me get this straight: on the very first night I arrive, you immediately want to throw me at a woman powerful enough to create a reality where she’s supreme dictator all because you believe one of her three closest friends is actually working against her? You know how cr–”
“Shawn, enough,” Sarge interrupted. “I know what you’re capable of, but they don’t. They just think you’re another guy pulled into their orbit, but you’re more than that. Remember the stadium?”
My mouth went dry. “No one knows about that.”
“Shawn, I know. You probably saved about 50 lives that day by stepping up and taking charge when the crowd rushed the barricade at her show in ‘17. No one knew at the time because you didn’t make a big deal of it, but I do. Your quick thinking there… and your quick thinking at the intersection, too, remember that?”
“I didn’t do anything special there, Sarge, it was–”
“It was a miracle, damn it!” Sarge yelled. “If you don’t shove those kids out of the way, that truck kills them. Right place, right time, and most importantly–” he pointed a finger at me “—the right person. You are the man for this job, every time. They won’t know what hit ‘em.”
I took some deep breaths. I had no interest or desire for recognition, but here I was, in an alternate universe ruled by a pop star, with the weight of the world (if not the entire universe) placed upon my shoulders. I turned and looked at the crowd. Every eye in the room was focused on me.
I stood up. “Everyone” I said. “Tonight, it’s all over. This? It’s not meant to be.”
“Let’s get our world back.”
The room erupted in cheers.
Sarge didn’t expect the weather to shift so abruptly, but she firmly believed it worked to our advantage, as it would create some white noise and provide some additional cover.
I followed her simple game plan: I snuck in through the garden gate in the midst of the midnight rain, scaled the vine-curtained exterior wall, entered the compound through the small window, and proceeded to her bedroom a few doors down the hall. Sarge believed that (Taylor’s Version) ends when this incarnation does, and we all hoped she was right.
I approached her room. The closed door muffled the loud music coming from within and I grasped the doorknob, slowly and carefully turning it counterclockwise before lightly pushing the door open.
And there she was.
She stood at the window that looked out on the front of the house. I couldn’t see her face, but her blonde hair braided down her back against a dark blue jacket and floor-length skirt was striking and familiar. A cat sat at attention on the desk to her right. How can she always look like an album cover, I thought as I crept toward the Queen General.
I reached into my jacket pocket for the pistol, but paused at the sound of her voice.
“I know you’re here, anti-hero.”
I froze. She pressed a button on the wall to the right of the window and the music stopped. I heard the door slam behind me.
“I knew you were trouble when you walked in, Shawn,” she continued, still staring out the window. “But shame on me, I guess. I knew you were different, but…”
She trailed off. Neither of us spoke. Moments later, she turned around to face me. Her presence was imposing; her thin, 5’10” frame in tall stiletto heels towered over me from only a few feet away.
“So tell me,” Taylor Swift said, “who betrayed me? No, wait, let me guess – it was Alana. She wants to be a movie star, right? I get to be a fucking cat and shill for a credit card and she gets critical acclaim for being a 17-year-old’s love interest, it makes sense.”
My eyes continued exploring the room. The walls, the angles seemed off. There was a taxidermied golden retriever with tattoos all over its legs on display next to the bookshelf. On the floor at my feet, the first two pages of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein torn from its binding. She interrupted my train of thought.
“Or maybe it was Danielle, right? She is kind of the odd one out of the three of them, an–”
“It was Este, actually,” I said, cutting her off. “She set it all up.”
“Este, wow,” she said. She walked to her chair and sat down. Olivia Benson or Meredith Grey, I wasn’t sure which, rushed over and leapt onto her lap. “I’ll be honest, I should have seen that coming. She wasn’t at Olive Garden on Tuesday…”
She turned her chair back to the window as her voice trailed off. Sounds from the rally in front of the compound echoed through the walls. The purr of a cat that loves her provided more noise, and I wondered what would become of the felines after this mission.
“So how do we proceed, Shawn?” She spun in her chair and put her arms out, palms up. “You have me cornered in my own home, you’ve been sent here to take me out and” –she made air quotes with her fingers– “’restore the old world,’ right? So what’s it gonna be? A beheading, a public hanging…”
“Why?”
Taylor paused. “Why what?”
“Why?” I pulled an empty hand out of my jacket and gestured in the air. “All this. Why? You literally had it all, and if you didn’t, you had the ability to buy it. Millions of fans. Billions of dollars. A Super Bowl hero! Why do this? Why destroy so many lives?”
“Not to be so cavalier about it, but the simple answer,” she said, “is because I can. I’m Taylor Swift, and it turns out that can literally bend the universe to my will. So that’s exactly what I did. It needed to be the start of an age, not just the end of a decade, and I was simply too important to stay on only one page of history.”
“That doesn’t explain anything,” I replied. “There are countless ways to go about making your mark without being so casually cruel!”
“It’s all in the name of being honest, Shawn.” Taylor Swift stood back up; Olivia or Meredith jumped to the bed. “You wanted to know the reason, right? It’s because I wanted to. That’s it. That’s the whole story. We were happy until we weren’t, and, in this case, Alana and I decided to do something about it. What’s done is done.”
The room got quiet. Silence loomed. For her, today was a fairy tale, but on the other side of the door was the rest of us; the victims of this twisted wonderland.
“So what happens now?” I asked. “Can you change it back?”
“I don’t know, to be honest. I never thought about it, not that it would make a difference.”
“But you’ve hurt so many people, and–”
“And so many people have hurt me! Joe, Jake, Karlie, John, Scooter, Lefsetz, fucking Matty… what am I supposed to do, just sit back and take it? Clearly, writing songs wasn’t fixing anything! What, should I re-record my albums again to get another twenty bucks off some teenage girls? Write another 10 minute ballad about of how much it sucks being the most famous woman on the planet who can’t keep a man for a bunch of people who think a jock who can’t spell ‘squirrel’ shouldn’t be the one to capture my heart?
“Fucking hell, Shawn. I’d love to be my old self again, but…”
“What was there to fix, Taylor?” I took a step forward. “You have how many homes? How many friends? How many accolades? Shit, how many fans? You could fill a football stadium five times in a week, and it wasn’t enough?”
The room got quiet. The staged rally continued outside, keeping her underlings occupied. Taylor Swift, in her Queen General era, isolated and alone in a (Version) of her own creation, kept her eyes locked on me. I took another step toward her, arms outstretched, hands open.
“You can change this, Taylor. It’s not too late. You just have to think back to before all these illicit affairs. The person you were in Tennessee. The one before all this. The old Taylor.”
A twitch. “The old Taylor isn’t here right now, though” she said. Her eyes narrowed, penetrating my subconscious, into my very soul.
The tenor of her voice, the air in the room, the very world around us, shifted.
“Why not?”
“Becaussse ssshe’ssss dead.”
The room exploded in sound and light. I spun away and shielded my eyes with my left hand. The woman in front of me was gone. In her place sat a giant serpent; its face retained some of Queen General Taylor Swift’s human characteristics, but its body uncoiled into a length many times larger than the pop star that stood here in the moments prior. It slithered toward me, head brushing against the ceiling, liquid forming on the sides of its mouth.
“They ssssssssssay all’ssssss well that endssssss well,” the snake hissed as its head positioned itself over me, “but you all ssssss–”
The snake’s head exploded, the rest of its body collapsing onto the bedroom floor. My right hand dropped the pistol; its smoking barrel leaving a trail in the air as it fell to the carpet. The serpentine creature quickly decomposed into dust and blood; blonde hair dropped to the floor like autumn leaves falling into place.
I collapsed onto the bed. I took a few deep breaths and rolled over to look back out the window. The dark of night was gone, replaced by a bright white. Moments later, the walls began to dissipate, then the floor, then the world itself.
I stood outside a Starbucks in a strip mall outside Nashville with a couple other early risers. The morning sun peeked over the horizon as I waited for the doors to open. I watched as an older woman wearing a United States Marine Corps t-shirt exited her car and made her way across the parking lot. A man, left arm in a sling, sat at a table on the sidewalk patio, tapping his feet to the sounds of “Love Story” over the outside speakers.
It all seemed very familiar, like some ancient memories followed me to this moment in time. My thoughts were interrupted by keys rattling on the other side of the door, and an employee in a green apron opened with an enthusiastic greeting.
“It’s coffee o’clock! Thanks for waiting everyone,” he said, holding the door open for the collected masses with a smile.
“Don’t mention it, Jake,” I said as I made my way through the threshold.
“Thank y–.” The barista froze and put his arm in front of me. “Wait, do I know you?”
My suspicions were confirmed. The world was back to the way it was meant to be, and the victims of (Taylor’s Version) were none the wiser. I looked into Jake’s eyes and grinned.
“All too well, my friend. All too well.”
J.R. Handfield (jrhandfield.com / @jrhandfield / @jrhandfield.bsky.social) lives in Central Massachusetts with his wife, his son, and his cat; not necessarily in that order.
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