Day 644

It all began with one road diversion.

He was heading to the carpark by the train station, about to catch the train to London for the day. Local traffic was heavier than normal, even for rush hour every street seemed packed. As he inched along to his turnoff he swore he saw the same five cars loop slowly past him, the people inside were either yelling or singing but he couldn't hear them. His own radio had been broken all week, volume never turning off or down.

As he approached his turning down to the aptly named Station Road he saw that it had been blocked by a police car, two or three cars were just past them all smoke and crumpled wreckage. The sign perched neatly on the window of the emergency vehicle advised there was a diverted route and to follow similar signs to lead back to the end of the road via untold others.

Unthinkingly he drove on, still perplexed by the looping cars beside him whose occupants sometimes just stared at him, mouth and eyes gaping wide and unmoving. At least the traffic on that side, odd as it was, seemed to be moving at a regular speed as opposed to his stop-start-stopping.

With every turn he took, following the diverted routes, he noticed that the road opposite or nearby was being blocked by an emergency vehicle of some sort, either police or hospital yet no people were visible there. The smouldering remnants of crashed cars lay just past them.

At some point he reckoned he'd begun to loop back around and was starting to head back the way he came. The cars that had been looping beside him were now in front and behind him. He wasn't sure when this had happened but it seemed that with the traffic now flowing smoothly he had unknowingly joined them.

When the loop ended everything would go black briefly and a human face the size of a torso would be sitting on the bonnet of his car briefly as he jerked awake once more. Its lidless eyes and far-too-toothy grin got closer with every loop. Eventually after countless loops it just sat there constantly, face pressed against the window, heavy breath fogging the glass.

He tried to look to the ignorant people on the other lane, yelling at them to turn back while trying to keep his eyes on the head in case it moved to his partially open side window. The people on the other side of the road either ignored him or looked confused.

He swore he'd seen himself over there several times already.

The other him never looked over.