HONORABLE MENTION, Summer 2025
The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition

BY KELSEY GILCHRIST

On the roadside, the woman is bent over beneath the raised hood of an inert Honda—the sensible preowned vehicle she purchased last week for a reasonable price—arms over her head to shield her face from the downpour. She can’t see anything wrong with the engine. Neither could the mechanic she visited this morning.

Sometimes check engine lights just get stuck, he said.

She protested that it isn’t stuck. It turns on sporadically, often at night, always when she’s alone.

There are other problems. The wipers, screaming across the dry windshield when her hand is nowhere near the lever. The radio, blaring static at top volume, unprompted.

She’d asked the former owner about the car’s peculiarities. He said there were never any issues that he knew of. But then, the vehicle wasn’t his—it was his wife’s. She had to leave town suddenly to care for a sick relative and asked him to handle the sale while she was gone.

Now the car is lifeless, stranding the woman on the side of a dark road with a dead phone—which she swore she had charged before she left. She gives up on examining the engine and returns to the driver’s seat. After scanning the interior for options, she leans across the dash to the passenger side and rummages through the glove compartment, hoping to find something that could help her. Maybe one of those portable phone chargers, the brick-like variety that resuscitates drained batteries.

No luck. Only crumpled receipts and a bottle of emerald nail polish.

Then, lightning streaks across the sky in a jagged arrow, lighting up the windshield and snatching the woman’s attention. It’s followed by thunder, gunshot loud.

As if responding to a cue, the car becomes a tornado of sounds and lights. Static shrieks through the speakers, the wipers scritch-scritch across the windshield, and the dashboard indicators flash in a chaotic, frenzied rhythm.

The woman fumbles for the door handle and yanks. Locked. She flicks the lock to open it and pulls again. The door still doesn’t move.

Heart pounding, she leans across the car, reaching for the passenger door. But before she can grasp it, she is jerked back into the driver’s seat as if pulled from behind. The seat moves too, backward and down, unfolding toward the floor. The woman feels her skull slam against the headrest, and she screams, eyes closed, hands clamped around the fabric upholstery.

It could be seconds or minutes before she realizes the sounds have stopped. The car is still and silent but for the drumming of raindrops on the rooftop.

Gingerly, she uncurls her fingers and opens her eyes. She is unhurt, lying horizontally on the seat, her face turned towards the crack between the backseat cupholder and one of the car’s narrow side panels.

Later, she would think of the mechanics and potential buyers who might’ve overlooked this crevice during their inspections. She would think of how the seller might’ve also missed it while cleaning, as the crack could only be glimpsed from this single angle. And she would think of the man’s wife, wondering whether she really did leave town at all.

But at that moment, all the woman can think about is what she sees six inches from her face, caught between the cup holder and the side panel next to the door, and momentarily illuminated by another flicker of lightning.

A single human finger, the manicured nail painted a vivid, emerald green.