NYC Midnight Flash Fiction (1000 words) 2026, Round 1

Genre: Ghost Story, Location: Filling Station, Item: Padlock

Placement: 2nd Place

The Mechanic

Marty Hale’s eyelids dipped low as she traced her oil-blackened fingers along the mossy wooden fence, cold green springing into her fingertips seeking the heavy padlock, choking a bottle of whiskey with her free hand. Marty was slowly fading, but there were still things she knew. 

Like sounds. That metallic knocking coming from Barrister’s ‘69 Camaro? Snapped wrist pin by his idiot son, Jack Junior. JJ would proudly race his father’s car around Hundred, population of 100. Appalachia’s smallest town. Chip off the old block.

Or smells. Like when Mary Jo’s daughter said her Chevy G20 reeked of pancakes. Mary Jo’s daughter, who was just as meticulously clean as her mother? Coolant leak. 

“You’re a better mechanic than your dad,” Barrister had said, handing Marty a check she knew would be post-dated. “And he was damn good.” 

Marty had smiled and nodded towards the sign over the only gas station in Hundred. The Pumps, Home of the Damn Good Mechanic. First, Harlan. Now, Marty. 

Barrister was a prick, just like his father. He muttered, “Shame what happened to that drunk bastard,” as he took his keys from Marty. 

The Pumps hadn’t been a gas station for over 40 years. Ever since the incident, the county decided no one in Hundred could be trusted with 40,000 gallons of gasoline. Not after what happened to Harlan. 

And what happened to Harlan would become the stuff of generational demons, the ghosts of his life that followed Marty around like baby ducklings. No. Her father’s ghost clung to her like those God-damned Styrofoam packing peanuts. 

She watched him each full moon, scaring the living shit out of everyone in Hundred. Every 29.5 days for the last forty years, five months. That’s nearly 500 hauntings multiplied by 100 people per haunting. That’s Mrs. Burton’s kind of fifth-grade math, God rest her soul. 

With tonight’s full moon the town would celebrate the 500^th haunting of “The Mechanic” with a pot-luck festival, where the Reddingers were honest to God taking bets on who in town could out-run Harlan’s ghost. 

Harlan, who popped in every 29.5 days, completely naked and on fire, streaking through the woods and screaming incoherent obscenities as his flesh burned through the forest behind the Pumps. The smell of gasoline and burning hair would fill the air, and the mouths of everyone in Hundred? Everyone, no matter the age, would feel the quick burn of Jack Daniels down the back of their throat followed by metallic blood rising from their esophagus. It was a rite of passage to be chased by the Mechanic through the woods and into the shallow waters of Jacob’s Creek, where Harlan had extinguished his own flames and died not from the fire consuming his flesh, but because he was drunk. And, yes, adults can drown in six inches of water. 

Marty hated Harlan today. 

He was a mediocre dad for 18 years, and then, to top it all off, to go on haunting the town for forty? 

“Shit,” Marty slurred as her finger caught a long splinter on the fence. Marty preferred Jim Beam to Jack Daniels. It took fifteen years after his death before she became an alcoholic. Within twenty-five years, she was the best mechanic in the tri-county area. She was known to fall asleep on the job, in or on the car, and once, once she passed out while driving Mrs. Burton’s ’72 pistachio green Skylark over the single lane bridge into Hundred. One way in and one way out and there was Marty, forehead pressing into the horn at 7:30 AM on a Tuesday. She pissed her pants and told Officer Michaels he could suck her dick when he said she smelled like death. 

Thirty-five years after the incident, she started looking like Harlan. Thick flannels and Levis and oil-stained steel-toed boots. During year thirty-eight, she was working on McFoster’s Metro alternator, drunk according to locals, when her hair cascaded down her shoulder and into the pulley, nearly scalping her. So she buzzed it off. Just like Harlan. 

By year forty the deep grooves of a hard life defined her face. Marty didn’t inherit smile lines like Sandy, Prom Queen, Class of ‘67. No. Marty was born into frown lines, looking down into engines, fixing problems she didn’t cause. 

She took a long swig of Beam and continued to sway along the fence until her hand reached the rusted padlock that separated the Pumps from the woods that Harlan haunted.  

She assessed the scene down the hill. Ten gallons of gasoline around a pyre of chopped wood and kindling. Marty took another swig of Beam and stripped down to nothing. 

Harlan said, “Ashes to ashes, but the fire don’t forget,” when he buried Marty’s mother, and Marty heard his words in her own voice as she stumbled into the firepit. She could hear the people of Hundred walking along the fence above: Officer Michaels’ hearty laughter, JJ placing bets with Reddinger.

She poured a heavy jug of gasoline over her head, stinging, dripping down her legs. Burning even before the flame. “Time for retirement, Pops.”

A loud WHOOSH surrounded Marty as she lit a Marlboro, and she smelled her flesh burning before she could process that the body on fire was hers. The people of Hundred started screaming, running down the hill towards her.

It was the Dickinson kid who realized what Marty had become and he asked, “Is Marty the new Mechanic?”

And so they chased her. 

Chased her through the woods, her naked flesh searing into her bones. Down, down into Jacob’s Creek. She heard the hiss of fire extinguishing and let her body numb, nestling into six inches of water as she took a last inhale of pure H2O. 

In her final moments it was the Dickinson kid again whose voice sweetly said, “See you in 29 days, Marty.”

And as Marty fell deeper into nothing, she heard Harlan’s tired sigh, and she thought, “Those Dickinson kids were always the smart ones.”

MY THOUGHTS: I loved writing this character. Marty is gritty and I loved her hometown and the life she maybe never wanted to escape. I also loved turning this ghost story into a LIVING ghost story, as Marty is quite literally the ghost of her father. I would definitely go back into Marty’s world and flesh out her life, her friends, and her inner thoughts before she became an alcoholic. Right now, she is too unreliable to truly know.