The Road Roller

A short story by Tobias Malm

No one believes me, not even my own mother. They all think I’m losing my mind. I’ve told them what happened, over and over, but no one listens. The doctors call it “delusions” and insist I need to stay in the hospital. They claim I went from perfectly sane to completely unstable in a single day. But I know the truth. I know I didn’t imagine it.

It happened a week ago. At least, that’s what I remember. According to my phone, though, it happened just yesterday. Everything feels horribly, impossibly strange. That night, I’d been at a bar with a couple of colleagues. Normally, I would’ve left with them, but a creepy man kept following me around. Uneasy, I decided to leave early.

The street was empty, so I staggered along the middle of it, eyes fixed on the black asphalt. It probably sounds more reckless than it really was. After all, it was just a small street with hardly any traffic, especially that late at night. The first strange thing I noticed was how all the sounds—the wind, the birds, the distant barking of dogs—suddenly dropped away, until there was nothing but silence. I didn’t care, though. I kept my gaze down and let my thoughts drift to how good it would feel to slip into bed beside my boyfriend once I got home.

A few seconds later, something on the ground caught my eye. It was a large red button, as big as a manhole, with the word EXIT written beneath it in bold white letters. I froze and stared, utterly confused. I had walked this road a thousand times and never seen anything like it. Then I looked up, and I don’t even know how to describe what I saw. The buildings were gone. Everything—simply everything—was gone. The asphalt stretched in every direction, reaching all the way to the horizon, like a parking lot without end.

“Hello!” I shouted.

I shook my head in a desperate attempt to return to reality, terrified I had lost my mind. My palms grew slick with sweat, my breathing turned ragged, and my heart pounded against my chest. Panting, I bolted a few meters forward, then stumbled back again. What’s happening? There was no way to answer the question, but it kept reverberating inside my head.

The sun rose on the horizon, yet far too early. Its pale rays had a sharp whiteness that stung my eyes. The sky was flawless, without a single cloud. I looked back at the strange button. Panic swelled in my chest until I was on the edge of tears. I couldn’t think, and that word—exit—kept echoing in my head. I just wanted out. Crouching down, I pressed the button. It didn’t move. I was too weak. I tried again, this time jumping on it, but still it wouldn’t budge. No matter what I did, it refused to go down.

I sat beside the button for what felt like hours, waiting, hoping I’d finally snap out of this nightmare. But I didn’t. By then, the sun blazed high in the sky, unbearably bright, the heat pressing down on me. That was when I made my first phone calls. I needed help. My voice was frantic as I tried to explain what had happened. They asked where I was, but the moment I started rambling about my experience, they interrupted, insisting I tell them where I really was. None of them believed me. To them, I had simply gone mad.

The air shimmered in the distance, heat waves bending the light until the asphalt looked wet and glassy. I started walking, clinging to the irrational hope that there was something out there, maybe a lake. I walked for hours, but the water I thought I saw never drew any closer. It was only a mirage. Still, I kept going. Even after I knew the truth, I pressed on until I noticed a tiny dot moving on the horizon. Was it another illusion, a trick of the heat, or just my mind betraying me? I couldn’t tell, but it sparked a flicker of hope. I shouted as loudly as I could, though my voice was ragged, my throat nearly dried to nothing:

“Is there anybody there?”

I walked and walked . . . then saw the dot shift again, sliding out of sight beyond the horizon. After a while, another dot appeared in the distance. This one stood perfectly still. Hope flared in me, though I couldn’t even say what I was hoping for, and I ran as fast as my legs would carry me. Above me, the sun hadn’t moved. It hung frozen in the sky. Sweat poured down my face, and the thirst was unbearable.

The dot revealed itself as a yellow road roller, parked motionless in the middle of this vast no-man’s-land. I couldn’t make sense of why it was there. Peering inside, I saw signs it had been used: bits of trash scattered beneath the driver’s seat. I shouted for help again, but my voice was too weak. No one could have heard me. I climbed into the vehicle, and to my immense relief, there was a water bottle inside. I took a cautious sip, forcing myself not to gulp it all down. Then I did the only thing left to do. I turned the key, started the engine, and began to drive.

I had never driven a road roller before, so it took some trial and error to figure out the controls. It crawled forward slowly, no faster than a jog at best. After a few turns, I realized what I had to do: find the button and crush it beneath the roller. The machine was heavy enough. It had to be. The problem was, I no longer remembered which direction I had come from. My only option was to choose a path at random, then return and try another if I found nothing. I set my jacket on the ground to mark the spot and rolled out. By roughly timing how long it had taken me to reach the road roller, I could guess how far to search before giving up and circling back. My first attempt failed. The second failed too. And the third. By then, the sun was burning into the back of my neck, merciless now that I no longer had my jacket.

Then something happened that shattered my already unstable mind. I found my jacket, only it wasn’t where I had left it. I picked it up and went back to check, and sure enough, the jacket I’d placed on the ground was still there. Now I had two identical jackets. Each one had the same contents in its pockets. It made no sense.

I could still text my boyfriend, and that calmed me down a little as I kept going. He didn’t believe me, though. No one did. Everyone was worried sick, convinced I was lost somewhere and completely out of my mind. And I was out of my mind, though not in the way they thought.

Hours passed. The road roller seemed to have endless fuel, but my phone battery was nearly gone. I switched it off to conserve what little life it had left. “I just want to go home!” I cried into the sweltering air. Then I saw it: another dot moving on the horizon. “What is that?” I whispered to myself.

Then I heard something rumble behind me. It was another road roller, moving in another direction and crossing my path. And in the driver’s seat, defying all sense and logic, I saw myself. I was driving the other machine. Stunned, I could only stare. We were identical. At least, that’s what I thought until the other me turned her face toward mine. She gave me a slow, unsettling smile, as if she knew something I didn’t. Terror froze my throat. I said nothing. We simply passed each other by.

A few days slipped by like this. I couldn’t tell how many, since the sun never left the sky. It just kept blazing overhead. During those endless days, I saw more dots drifting along the horizon. I also crossed paths with myself twice more. I couldn’t tell if it was the same person each time or additional doppelgängers. Whenever I tried to communicate, they only gave me that same eerie smile before driving away.

I became convinced they were all searching for the button. I imagined they would leave me stranded here and take my place at home if they pressed it before I did. The thought terrified me more than anything else. After what felt like forever, I finally spotted the button. One of my doppelgängers was already driving toward it, right in front of me. I couldn’t let her reach it first. My life depended on it.

“Stop!” I shouted.

She turned to me with a smile, but she didn’t stop. I couldn’t push my road roller any faster, so I leapt off and sprinted toward her until I caught up. In sheer desperation, I yanked her out of the driver’s seat while the machine kept rumbling forward. We both clambered onto it, wrestling in the seat, each of us fighting for control. At last, driven by raw survival instinct and fueled by adrenaline, I shoved her, and she toppled in front of the road roller.

The screams that tore from her as the roller crushed her body weren’t natural. They broke apart with a strange, glitching quality, pitched far too high. It sounded almost like a little girl. Blood splattered across the asphalt, but I forced myself not to look. My focus stayed on the road roller as I steered it toward the button. The machine’s weight pressed it down with a sharp, satisfying click.

I opened my eyes, though I couldn’t remember closing them. A steady beeping rang beside me. Groggy, I looked around, and everything had returned: the wind, the birds, even the distant barking of dogs. Relief washed over me, but only for a moment. A man came sprinting toward me, screaming at the top of his lungs. It was only then I realized I was still inside the road roller. It stood parked in the middle of a playground.

I stumbled out of the vehicle and landed in a pool of blood. My world spun, dread settling like a stone in my stomach. I had no idea what to do. The hysterical man kept rushing toward me, so I bolted into a nearby park and hid there for what felt like forever. When I finally turned my phone back on, it rang non-stop. Police sirens grew louder, closer, until everything went dark. I woke up in the hospital. They tell me I did something terrible, but they don’t understand what I really went through. I just wish someone would believe me.