#lover2019

Also me:

It was when she had me in the headlock that I began to wonder if I might have struck a nerve.

Was it something I said?

I thought back through everything I had said to her that day.

“You look nice today.”

Wasn’t that.

“Have you done something different with your hair?” 

Pretty standard conversational fare, shouldn’t provoke this kind of reaction.

“Your boyfriend is a fire demon, and you need to exorcise him.”

I thought it might be that but then who can tell with teen girls, honestly? 

“Why are you mad?” I asked her, or at least tried to ask her. My voice was a little strained because her elbow was tightening on my throat and her hair was hanging over my face so that every time I inhaled I got a mouthful of it. 

“Why are you in my dressing room?” 

Oh, yeah. Maybe it wasn’t even the fire demon thing, maybe I was just intruding. Suddenly it all made sense. Mystery solved. Case closed. 

I made some strangled noises and tried to spit out a clump of blondeness but it wasn’t going to work. Country singers have big hair and now a good solid third of hers was clogging my airways. She was going to have to let me go if I was going to explain.

“You’re going to have to let me go for me to explain,” I whispered gently into her thoughts. It’s just mild telepathy, nothing fancy. I don’t have a nosebleed whenever I do it or anything.

She dropped me and shouted an expletive. It was uncouth, I was shocked and taken aback. You don’t hear that kind of language in the other realms.

“You can’t be shocked and taken aback, you’re the one who broke into my dressing room,” she shouted, her eyes had narrowed to thin slits of rage.

Perfect, I thought, we can use this.

“Use what? Who the hell are you?”

“See, this is why I don’t use the telepathy thing - once I get into the swing of it I start sharing thoughts I don’t want to and before long everyone knows where I’m going for lunch and there’s a queue for the burrito bar. It’s like inception. Suddenly everyone wants a burrito and I’m left at the back of the queue where the burritos are just wet tortillas filled with cold rice and the memory of beef.”

She kicked me in the face. She has really long limbs. 

“I will admit I should have explained myself better.”

“Yes.” 

She folded her arms and looked at me. There was an awkward silence before I realised it was now time to explain myself better.

“Have you ever heard of muses?” 

“Like the Greek myth?” 

“No, not the band. The Greek myth, you know, this is why my job has been hell since 1994… Oh, wait, you said myth didn’t you? That is the correct answer… That doesn’t happen often. Imagine if those muses were like the Greek myth except also they’re fire demons that possess men of influence and try to trick them into forming a global government of badness that will bring about the fall of mankind.”

“So not really like the muses at all then?” I liked her sarcasm, it was spunky, she’d need that in the hellscape. Demons love spunkiness.

“There are nine of them, plus assorted demons and servants. Can I move on to the good part?” 

“Is that the part where you leave my dressing room before I call the cops?” 

“No. It’s the part where I tell you that you, Taylor Alison Swift, are a Lightning Rod.” 

They never react the way that I want them to. It’s not like telling someone they’re a wizard and they get to go to wizard school. Tell someone that and suddenly you’re like their best friend in the world: it’s all fun and laughter and shopping for owls. Tell someone they’re a kind of magical exorcist and the fate of the world depends on them and suddenly you’re the bad guy. 

“Yeah, I’m calling security.” 

“Wait, wait, wait!”

She paused, her hand hovering over the phone. 

“Listen.” 

She did, I saw her eyes, once angry slashes of rage, grow wide. 

“What is that?” 

“That’s me. You can hear me.”

“No, it’s like music. Like a melody.”

“It’s the sound of me disturbing the dimensions by being here, you can hear it because you’re a Lightning Rod, Taylor,” I always feel weird about this bit, sometimes they can smell us, sometimes they can taste us on the air, but every once in a million years there’s one that can hear it. Every one of us, demons, sprites whatever, we have our own little tune. We know each other’s, but Lightning Rods don’t have them because they’re technically mortal. It’s like having someone who hates the internet scroll through your Instagram and tut. I think that’s what it’s like. I don’t show up in photos so Instagram’s not really my bag. Stupid demon laws. 

“What’s a lightning...thing?” she asked, her eyes a little misted as she concentrated on my tune. 

“It’s a kind of exorcist. The muses are drawn to you. You’re like catnip...Demon-nip if you will.”

Her gaze snapped back to me, fire in her eyes again.

“What does that mean, am I in danger?” she asked. She didn’t sound afraid, more angry, like this whole thing was just some big inconvenience to her.

“No danger,” I said, “If you let me train you.” 

“Ugh,” she sank into a chair, “Fine.”

********************************

New York, midnight. Rain falls. 

He cracks open his hotel room door and stumbles in. He doesn’t feel good. Who would, in his condition? 

“Hello John,” she whispers gently as the storm outside throws light across her face. She’s draped in a chair with it’s back to the corner of the room. The dress he left her in is gone, and she’s dressed all in black. A hood obscures most of her face. 

“I thought I just…” his drunken vision swirls to the hotel door. His memory takes him back on a stumbling journey through the lobby, out into the street, crying girl in a dress. 

“You left me to make my own way home, John,” she said. Her lips were blood red. 

“How did you…” he was on the 20th floor. The elevator had taken ten minutes. 

“I’m in good shape, John,” she looked at him, she was holding something silver and small. He wanted to look at her, and at the same time he wanted to close his eyes tight until she was gone.  

“What do you want?” with a sudden wave of discomfort he realised how much she was scaring him, this wide-eyed nineteen year old girl whose heart he’d been toying with. He looked around the room, she’d taken the mirror off of the wall above the mantlepiece, it was leaning against the fireplace. She’d scratched something into its surface. “What did you do with the mirror?”

“Do you remember when he came to you? He said he’d help you and you shook his hand, and you never saw him again.”

“What are you talking about?” he didn’t like her voice, it sounded different: powerful.

“And even though you never knew his name, you always remember that after that encounter everything started going right,” she stood up, her clothes were wet from the rain. She held out her hand, her nails sparkled. 

He didn’t want to touch her but something in him was compelled to reach out. 

Before he knew what was happening he was on his knees, her arm was tight around his throat and she was pressing something cold against his head. 

“Look up,” she said, wrenching his neck so his face was opposite the mirror. He did not expect what he saw. Two faces fought against each other on the surface of his skull. One moment he recognised his own deep set eyes, his square jaw. The next second, a different face, rounder, with odd, taught features seemed to pull against his skin and try to gain prominence. 

“Get out,” she said, but as he tried to get away from her she wrenched his body back into position, “Not you John.” 

She pressed the silver object harder into his skin, it hurt like hell. Something inside him was tearing. To his horror, the face in the mirror began to speak. 

“You can’t beat me Swift, they’ve all tried - even Aniston gave it her best shot, he likes having me here.”

“Sure,” she said, her grip tightening, “But how many of them knew your tune.”

She whistled. Two brief, one long, and then two more quick notes. Rising and descending in pitch like a small hill of sound. 

Something felt like it was splitting within him. Like his skin was pulling away from his whole body and falling backwards. In the mirror he watched as something horrifying emerged from his limp frame. She let him fall to the ground like a sack of rotten potatoes.  

“You’ve had your fun with him, asshole,” she said, and kicked the mirror hard. It shattered and burst into flames. 

He woke in a cold sweat. The mirror hung above the fireplace. 

A nightmare.

**************

“I just don’t think it’s fair to name-check him,” I said, reclining in an armchair. I liked her home studio. It was warm, my office in the Inbetween is cold and damp and the demon who sits next to me smells of actual brimstone. 

“Why?” she said, strumming her guitar pensively, “His demon, his song. Doesn’t the world get to know what he did?” 

“The demon or the man?”

“Both,” she stopped strumming and bowed her head, “Is it the muses that make them all assholes or do I have just awful taste.” 

“Look,” I said, putting on my most authoritative voice, “You’re the best in the business. You’re a talented exorcist. I hear back at the office they’re even making a pamphlet about you for us to give to the next generation of Rods. You’ll be an inspiration.”

“That is not an answer to my question,” she said, putting her guitar back into its stand and spinning around in her chair, “I’ve heard of guys battling their inner demons but I never knew I would be the one that had to do all the vanquishing. It’s exhausting.”

I always came to watch her record the songs. There was something exciting about watching the lights flicker and the room shake as she trapped a demon in a melody. She was the first aural Rod since the invention of recorded sound, this innovation was helping us keep some real pieces of work at bay in her pieces of work. 

MY HEART ❤️

All too well is my absolute favorite @taylorswift song and this means the world to me to read the original and final draft handwritten by incredible writer herself 💗

-TAYLOR