The Toll Booth to Everywhere

The alarm chirps rudely, waking me from the only thing I look forward to: sleep.

I get up slowly, as if the weight of my morning rituals might somehow delay the inevitable. My head sinks into my palms, elbows balanced on rickety knees. I sit there for a while, not thinking, not feeling—just stalled.

Finally, I let out a long, slow breath and begin another day. They’re all the same.

Wake up. Hate being awake. Stretch. Empty bowels. Dress. Eat. Get to work.

The drive out is long and hot, even before the sun’s up. No traffic, of course—just empty desert roads lined with dust, ghost signs, and the occasional stubborn cactus trying to look like it still believes in rain.

I pass the diner that never opens, the gas station that’s been boarded since Clinton, and the crooked sign that says “WEL OME” in a way that feels personal.

The booth shows up like a bad memory—squatting alone at the edge of everything. Concrete walls, metal roof, one cracked window. A monument to pointlessness.

I park in the shade it barely casts, unlock the door, and step inside. The air smells like warm vinyl and stale tobacco. Everything’s just as I left it: the stool with the wobble, the DNA Diviner with its soft red light and faded decals, the ledger with no end or beginning.

I sit. The chair creaks like it’s tired too. I clock in.

And I wait.

7:47 AM.  It won’t be long now.  Then I see it.

Like a mirage an old Pontiac slowly lurches forward, unsure if I too am a mirage in this booth.  The Pontiac comes to a halt.  The driver’s a woman, late thirties maybe. Sunglasses, lipstick, funeral-black dress. She rolls down the window and stares straight ahead. She doesn't speak.

I slide open the panel.

“Arm.”

She doesn’t argue. Just shifts in her seat as if rethinking every decision that led her here and slowly stretches out her arm through the window like it’s a toll ticket.

The Diviner hums. One drop of blood, and it begins.

The first screen lights up:

“Venice. March 13th, 2046. Midnight. Balcony.”

The second follows:

“Payment Due: Final memory of her face.”

She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t even blink. Just nods once, slow and final.

I press the button. A rusty mechanical arm lifts from the ground beside the booth—like an old-fashioned toll gate. No lights. No fireworks. No celestial choir. Just that creaking steel arm rising in the dry wind.

She drives forward without hurry. Her car rolls past the booth and keeps going, engine purring softly. Then, as the road stretches ahead, the heat begins to shimmer. Her silhouette blurs, bends, softens like a mirage.

And just like that—she’s gone.

No tire marks. No sign. Just sunlight on asphalt, and the taste of dust in the air.

I lower the arm, log the toll, and take a drink of coffee that’s already gone cold.  I make a face.  I hate cold coffee.  

The hours between cars stretch like dried sinew—taut, cracking, empty.

Sometimes it’s three hours. Sometimes ten. I’ve gone whole days without seeing a single soul. Just the sound of the wind scraping sand across the asphalt. Just the booth. Just me.

There’s no radio. No internet. Management said signals interfere with the Diviner. I don’t know if that’s true, but I never tested it. I’ve stopped testing things. It’s easier to just sit and rot.

I read the same paperback mystery once a week. It’s missing the last five pages. I like that. I like not knowing how something ends.

I used to count the tumbleweeds. I’d name them, even. Then one day I realized I was doing it unironically, and I stopped. Felt too close to losing the thread.

Sometimes, I wonder if they space the arrivals out on purpose—like it’s part of the price. Not theirs. Mine.  I can’t even remember how I got here anymore.

Because in the end, it’s just waiting. For them to show up. For them to leave. For the dust to settle.

Some days I wonder if I’m still alive.
Other days, I know I am.
That’s worse.

I’ve been tempted over the…years? Months? There are no seasons here to tell…but over the length of time I have thought of escaping this purgatory and going…on.  Somewhere.  Anywhere.  Ideally where the coffee is hot.

Car.  Wait.  Car.  Wait.  New Amsterdam February 29 2188.  First memory  of snow.  Rome March 15, 44 BC.  37 drachmas.  Munich November 8, 1923.  All feelings of hate.  All dates people longed to be at and as they crossed the threshold their future, the past, lay before them.  I wonder if they ever returned.

The desert was unbearably hot.  Oppressive.  It’s late afternoon when the next car arrives. A pickup—sun-bleached, dented, the kind that rattles louder than it drives. The kind I used to drive.

I look up from my half-solved crossword as it rolls to a stop. Nothing about it stands out—until I see the driver’s face.

I freeze.

It's Mason.
Goddamn Mason.

From back before the booth, back before I was whatever I am now. We grew up on the same street. Stole cigarettes behind the bowling alley. Worked summer construction together. He was the best man at my wedding. That was—hell, I don’t even know how long ago. Time doesn’t work right out here.

He looks older, of course. Sun-worn. Eyes like someone who’s been carrying grief too heavy for too long. But it’s him.

And he doesn’t recognize me.

He leans an elbow out the window, casual. Like this is just another gas station on a long, hot drive. “This the place?” he asks.

I nod, slow.
“Yeah. This is it.”

He offers his arm like the others.

I hesitate. A blink too long.

Then I press the Diviner to his skin. It hums. Drinks. Reads.

The screen flickers.
“December 18th, 2002. The garage. Before the fire.”

Payment field lights up:
“Your son's voice.”

I don’t say anything. I don’t have to.

He stares at the screen, breath hitching once. Just once. Then he nods. Not a dramatic, movie nod. Just the kind of nod a man gives when he’s already dead in all the ways that count.

I press the button. The rusted toll arm lifts.
He drives forward.

And slowly, quietly, fades into the shimmer—like heat haze swallowing a memory.

I lower the arm with shaking fingers.
Then I sit back down.

And I fume.

I don’t know what broke.

Maybe it was the woman who smiled as she paid with her mother’s name. Or the kid in the hatchback who didn’t even blink when the Diviner demanded his own future. Maybe it was Mason.

Or maybe it was just the silence today. The nothingness.

I stare at the ledger, its pages thick with desperation. Everyone else gets to go. To the moment they lost. The person they loved. The place they never reached. And me?

I just take the toll.

I stand. Push the stool back. It scrapes the floor like it’s trying to stop me.

I step outside, feel the night air bite a little harder than usual. I walk around to the other side of the glass for the first time since I started this job—if you can even call it a job. There's no paycheck. No schedule. Just arrivals.

The booth hums behind me.

I do it just like they do. I roll up my sleeve. Hold out my arm to the Diviner, alone on its perch.

It’s not supposed to work on me.
But the light flickers. The needle hisses out. I flinch. It still stings.

The screen stays black. No destination. No date. No desire.

But the second screen lights up.

“Payment Due: Last sense of why you stayed.”

I stare at it. And I laugh, just once—dry and cracked and hollow.

I reach into the booth. Press the switch.

The arm lifts.
The wind stills.

I get in my car. The seat is still warm from this morning. I put it in drive. I take the road. I go forward.

As I drive, the world starts to shimmer. The line where road meets sky begins to tremble like hot air over pavement. I feel light. Then hollow. Then gone.

And then—

The alarm chirps rudely, waking me from the only thing I look forward to: sleep.

I sit up. Slowly. Head in my hands. Elbows on rickety knees. I breathe.

Then I start the day. Wake up. Hate consciousness. Stretch. Empty bowels. Dress. Eat.

And I drive to work.