HONORABLE MENTION, Winter 2026
The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition

BY RALPH WALES HUNTLEY

After my wife died, we started to experience marital problems.

“This doesn’t have to change anything,” I said.

“I wish I could believe you,” she said.

We gave it a try.

The hardest part was explaining it to our closest friends, Jim and Millie Bridger. We four had often engaged in couples nights: canasta, potlucks, theater. Jim was skeptical when I suggested a get-together.

“Please, Jim,” I begged. “Please set a fourth plate. I know you can’t see her, but I promise you, Sheila will be there. We’re going through a rough patch, and your guys’ friendship and empathy mean so much—to both of us.”

That evening was filled with much awkward silence. Millie would start a conversation, and Sheila would change the subject. And I had to translate and interpret all of it. At one point, Sheila accused Millie of being shallow, emotionally. Millie left the table, red-faced, and we heard the back bedroom door slam.

Jim and I finished our brandies in silence. Sheila just sat there, invisible and stewing. Of course the canasta game was off, but I suggested cigars as a way to salvage part of the evening. Jim looked at me and slowly shook his head.

Later that evening, Sheila and I got into a horrible argument.

“I can’t believe how rude you were,” I said. “Why did you have to go after Millie like that?”

“Peter, I’m dead,” she said. “Being dead means being honest. Really honest. There is nothing more honest than death, wouldn’t you agree?”

I’m not sure I did, but I nodded anyway. “It doesn’t mean you have to be rude, though, does it?”

“I wasn’t being rude. I was being honest.”

Sheila began to make friends on the other side. I couldn’t see them, but I could tell she was distracted, and she had taken to fading on me when she was interacting with them.

“Your new friends seem interesting,” I said. “I’d love to meet them. Maybe we could have them over. Like a social mixer.”

Sheila stared through me. “No, Peter, I don’t think so. We need our boundaries if this is going to work.”

Of course sex, in its usual manifestation, was off, but I had gone to the library and checked out several books on fixing broken relationships.

“We can still have intimacy,” I said. “It will just look and feel a little different. I’m still so attracted to you.”

Sheila gave me a little haunted smile, and shook her head sadly. “Peter . . .”

I had a one-night stand with a living woman. I was drunk and the opportunity presented itself at our neighborhood bar. I took the woman home, and Sheila faded in on us, in bed. I was mortified. Sheila wasn’t angry so much as deeply sad. Wounded. That scared the hell out of me. How could I have been so selfish? I suggested couples therapy.

“How committed are each of you to this relationship?” asked Dr. Slade, glancing at the empty chair next to me. “It’s best when both people participate.”

“Sheila is here,” I insisted. “It’s complicated.”

Dr. Slade raised an eyebrow and jotted something in his notebook.

“We both want to make it work,” I said, and looked at Sheila for encouragement.

Sheila turned her head, looking at something I couldn’t see. She gave a little laugh, then faded.

“Having an affair is a real betrayal of trust,” said the doctor. “You are going to have to rebuild that trust.”

“Sheila didn’t even cry,” I said. “She is drifting away from me.”

“You need to give her space to experience her feelings,” Dr. Slade said. He looked at the chair next to me. “Does Sheila have anything to add?”

I stared at the empty chair. “She agrees with you,” I said.

Dr. Slade jotted something else in his notebook.

I gave her space. I saw her less and less.

She appeared at dinner one night. Her face looked strained.

“I miss you so much,” I said.

She started crying, and reached out her hands. I held the air where they should have been, and we stayed like that, crying together, for the rest of the evening. I was the happiest I had been in a long time.

I made a decision.

The next day I attached a tube from the exhaust pipe of our car and fed it into the backseat window. I turned on the ignition, and gradually a grand drowsiness overtook me. It was comforting, like falling asleep in Sheila’s arms. I had finally decided to be honest with her, in the deepest and most profound way. To make the necessary sacrifice to salvage our marriage. This would help to rebuild her trust in me.

When it was done, I ran to her and took her in my arms. Oh, to feel her cool skin again! Her fingers. Her arms. Her breath. We both wept, and I held her delicate face in my hands, and told her I loved her and how sorry I was about the affair.

“I want to spend eternity fixing our marriage,” I proclaimed. “I want honesty. Brutal, ragged, stripped-to-the-bone honesty.” I wiped the tears from my eyes, and took a deep breath.

She stepped back, and her mouth held a sad smile. She reached out her hand. Not forward, to me, but off to the side. A young man faded in, with a handsome, sweet face, dimpled and blue-eyed.

“I’ve met someone else,” said Sheila. “I’m really happy now. You need to find your own happiness. You need to let me go and move on.”

Fresh tears slid down my hollow cheeks. “What are you saying?”

She cleared her throat. “Peter, I want a divorce. It’s time.” And the two of them faded away, hand in hand.

I learned that day that ghosts can fade from each other. I remained there a moment in the cold bite of the wind, numb, empty. And then I, too, faded, but only from myself.