This story is a response to the Muse on Monday prompt from November 2, 2026: Write a scary story about being stuck in a traffic jam in broad daylight.

Traffic Jam on an Empty Road

Route 44 was empty, and the sky was a dazzling blue—the rich, unrealistic color a child might paint it in a picture. I was going twenty over the speed limit, relaxed and letting the SUV gobble up the miles.

I came over a rise and saw the traffic jam spreading out in front of me, red brake lights receding out in front of me until they touched the blue of the sky.

It was a bad one. The cars weren’t even moving at all, just stopped in a three-lane-wide block. I slowed and stopped behind the last car in the middle lane. With a traffic jam this bad, I expected to see smoke rising from a horrific accident up ahead, maybe a tractor trailer fire or even a train derailment. But the sky remained blue and stainless.

I sat for almost fifteen minutes, my anxiety and impatience rising steadily like a thermometer on a summer morning. The cars ahead of me did not move. Not once did I see any of those angry brake lights relent even for a second. Finally, I pulled out my phone to see if I could find an alternate route. There were no side roads, but if I could get to the other side of the divided highway, I could maybe retrace my steps and take a side road. At this section of the road, the two sides of the highway were separated by a deep ditch that not even an off-roader could get over.

I looked behind me and realized with a start that I was still the last car. No other cars had arrived in the last fifteen minutes. Route 44 is not heavily used, but there must have been some other cars not far behind me, especially considering the hundreds of cars ahead of me.

I turned the air conditioner up a notch and tried to control my breathing. Despite the open blue sky, I was starting to feel closed in. Finally, in desperation, I eased the car to the right, planning to commit the ultimate jerk move in a traffic jam and drive around it on the shoulder.

As soon as I drove onto the shoulder, the car in the right lane cut to the right, driving onto the shoulder and blocking my path. I jammed on the brakes and spinning the wheel, drove sideways across the road, aiming for the left shoulder. The last car in the left lane acted the same way, moving instantly to block my way.

I screamed and pounded the steering wheel, more in shock and confusion than anything else. Who were these people? I threw the car in park and jumped out, intent on confronting these psychopaths blocking the whole highway.

As soon as I moved toward the left-hand car, the entire traffic jam moved forward. It was not just an illusion: I watched the wheels turn and heard the crunch of small stones under the tires, but all the cars moved together, like a flock of mechanical starlings. I started running, but the cars sped up, moving as a single unit to stay just ahead of me. I stopped, out of breath and looked back at my car now a thousand feet back down the road. I was getting the traffic jam to move finally, but it was not much good if I had to walk back to my car.

I started walking back to the car. Despite the strangeness, I felt a glimmer of hope. It would take forever, but if the traffic jam was going to move when I walked, I could move it forward slowly. I just needed to drive up to the end of the cars and repeat the process.

I reached the car and as I turned back to open the door, I caught sight of the cars. They were now ten feet from my front bumper. Somehow, they were all silently reversed to come back to where they had started.

I threw the door open and got in, trying to keep my head from spinning. I did a wild turn with tires screeching and headed the wrong way back along the highway. At this point I would have welcomed another car speeding towards me, just so I could be assured that physics and reality still existed and ruled the world. I kept pressing the pedal down, watching the needle hit 100, then 120 miles per hour. The SUV started vibrating. I glanced in the rearview mirror and almost threw up from terror.

The traffic jam was right behind me. The cars were not reversing, they couldn’t be because the brakes lights were all still on, like the red torches of a night-time mob. I was moving—I could see the signs and trees flicking by on either side, but the sight in the mirror remained completely still, as if it were a painting. I twisted my neck around to make sure it was not just the mirror that had become bewitched.

I did not care what was happening or what cursed trap of preternature I had fallen into. I barely cared if I did slam into another car. All I wanted now was to reach a crossroad and get off this highway.

I looked at the dashboard clock and realized I had been speeding the wrong way down the highway for twenty minutes, the traffic jam remaining forever behind me like a wall. So far, I had not seen any crossroads. I know there had been some, there must have been some. I must have gone 40 miles at least by now. There had been a gas station not far behind, I remembered. I don’t remember passing it again.

You can never escape, I thought. You’re on a treadmill, driving in place until you run out of gas or have a heart attack from the stress. Maybe I could stop and start walking across country, but now I was not certain I would ever find life ever again. For all I knew, I would walk for hours, only to come back to this same highway with its eternal traffic jam.

I started to scream. The SUV slewed wildly from side to side, threatening to roll over. The last thing I remember was the deep blue sky in the windshield before the SUV dipped over the embankment and the world changed to browns and tans and shrieks and bangs.

* * *

A light was in my eyes, blinding me. I blinked and put up a hand. It was night and someone was shining a flashlight on me, playing the beam around the inside of the car. The SUV was on its side, and I was suspended from my seatbelt.

“You okay? You injured at all?”

I groaned out a response.

“Looks like you must have dozed off and went over into the ditch,” the man said. “You’re lucky you’re alive. I’ve called the highway patrol. They should be here soon. Can you move?”

“Is there a traffic jam?” I asked

“Traffic jam? No, the road’s mostly deserted. You’re lucky I saw your taillights as I was passing by or maybe no one would have found you.”

Somehow nothing was broken and I was able to struggle out of the seatbelt and out the driver’s side window just as the highway patrol arrived. The officer asked me all the regular questions but soon decided I must have sustained a head injury. I could not remember what had happened and kept asking about a traffic jam. I insisted on climbing up the embankment and standing on the edge of the highway to see the empty road for myself.

“I’ll bring you to the hospital to get checked out,” the officer said. “It’s just up in Heather City, about 10 miles straight up 44.” He opened the rear door of his cruiser.

“Thank you,” I said. I started to get in, then hesitated. I thought I saw, far ahead of us, a faint line of brake lights. “Is there any way you could take a different road?”