Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness." -- Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830) 2013 She strutted into my office wearing a dress that clung to her like Saran Wrap to a sloppily butchered pork knuckle, bone and sinew jutting and lurching asymmetrically beneath its folds, the tightness exaggerating the granularity of the suet and causing what little palatable meat there was to sweat, its transparency the thief of imagination. Chris Wieloch, Brookfield, WI Winning sentence, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest "Don't know no tunnels hereabout," said the old-timer, "unless you mean the abandoned subway line that runs from Hanging Hill, under that weird ruined church, beneath the Indian burial ground, past the dilapidated Usher mansion, and out to the old abandoned asylum for the criminally insane where they had all those murders." Lawrence Person, Austin, TX Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Adventure "I told you to wear sensible shoes, but no, your vanity would not allow it!" he yelled at me as if that had something to do with the airplane crashing into the jungle and all the bodies draped in the trees, but it was just the sort of nonsense I was used to from him, making me wish one or the other of us was hanging dead above us, instead of Rodney. Thor F. Carden, Madison, TN Winner, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest As the sun dropped below the horizon, the safari guide confirmed the approaching cape buffaloes were herbivores, which calmed everyone in the group, except for Herb, of course. Ron D Smith, Louisville, KY Runner-Up, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest It was a tricky situation, given the complex behavioral instincts of the Lowland Gorilla, and this accidental group encounter with a silver-backed dominant male was taxing Professor Wiesenheimer's knowledge of interspecies primate interaction to the limit, yet confidently and without hesitation, he turned to his startled pupils and whispered, "Run like Hell." 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Mark Watson, Raleigh, NC Crime It was such a beautiful night; the bright moonlight illuminated the sky, the thick clouds floated leisurely by just above the silhouette of tall, majestic trees, and I was viewing it all from the front row seat of the bullet hole in my car trunk. Tonya Lavel, Barbados, West Indies Winner, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Seeing Mrs. Kohler sink, Detective Moen flushed as he plugged the burglary as the unmistakable work of Cap Fawcet, the Mad Plumber, for not only had her pool of assets been drained, but her clogs were now missing, and the toilet had been removed, leaving them with absolutely nothing to go on. Eric J. Hildeman, Greenfield, WI Runner-Up, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest This was a very easy mystery for me to solve, so I never considered putting it in a story until I was telling some friends about it, and I realized the average person, such as yourself, has trouble figuring it out, although it is really laughably simple. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Thor F. Carden, Madison, TN Observing how the corpse's blood streaked the melting vanilla ice cream, Frank wanted to snap his pen in half and add drops of blue ink to the mix, completing the color trio of the American flag - or the French flag, given that the body had just fallen from the top of the Las Vegas Eiffel Tower onto a creme glacee cart. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Alanna Smith, Wappingers Falls, NY The dame was stacked, both conventionally and in that she was the third of five bodies piled against the wall, the wall's earth tones reminding me of Grandmother's house, which figured since it was her house, she having stacked the bodies there after poisoning them, so I studied the bodies as I munched on Grandmother's ginger snaps and felt a twinge in my stomach. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Kenneth Bennight, San Antonio, TX Fantasy The fairies of Minglewood, which is near Dingly Pool, were having a grand revel with flower-cakes, and butterfly dances, looking ever so pretty, while Queen Bellaflora swept her wand o'er the waterfall's foam, making it pop like the snot-bubbles on your baby sister's face. Janine Beacham, Busselton, WA, Australia Winner, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest There once was a nasty, evil troll who lived beneath a bridge and took pleasure in collecting gold from the unsuspecting users of the infrastructure; however, no one used the bridge because an evil troll lived under it so the troll didn't do much of anything. Rachel Flanigan, Honolulu, HI Runner-Up, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest This was going to be a science fiction novel until I realized that you actually have to know some real science for it to work well, so I changed it to a fantasy novel instead, because that way I can just make up the rules as I go, unhampered by the laws of physics or chemistry, as if you knew what they were anyway. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Thor F. Carden, Madison, TN Historical Fiction The Pilgrims and Native Americans gathered around the feast, a veritable cornucopia of harvest and game, a gastronomic monument to the bountiful biodiversity of the land, and while Mrs. Standish's cranberry sauce was a far cry from the homogeneous gelatinous can-imprinted sacrosanct blob which has become the holiday's sine qua non, the rest of the food was good. Jordan Kaderli, Dallas, TX Winner, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest It was a long shot by any measure, good bowman though he was, and he didn't want to risk it with his kid, but a lot was on the line, and that big, red apple was square on his dear boy's head, and he had to shoot it off … then everything went still, and William Tell heard the sound of music, quiet, then gently rising, like an overture. John Holmes, St. Petersburg, FL Runner-Up, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest General Lee arranged for the dreaded surrender, yet capitalized on his opponents' weaknesses to the very end, striking a tiny parting blow for the Army of Northern Virginia (chuckling to himself) as he remembered from Academy days how many Union commanders had struggled with spelling even common words, and so ran his finger along the map and settled on Appomattox. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Randal Pilz, Milton, FL Horror Even though Letitia had brushed her teeth, Draco could still smell her garlicky breath, but assuming her blood would at least be toxin free, if not particularly appetizing - because of the antibiotic properties of the garlic's allicin, an organosulfur compound - he gleefully plunged his incisors into her throbbing jugular vein. Maggie Lyons, Callao, VA Winner, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Count Glandula's castle flickered with eerie lights, where the immortal villain slaked his evil thirst in the dungeons with innocent victims - two moldy old peasants because the virtuous maidens had all been taken by the hot teenaged vampires down the road whose breath wasn't so icky. Janine Beacham, Busselton, WA, Australia Runner-Up, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Purple Prose Before they met, his heart was a frozen block of ice, scarred by the skate blades of broken relationships, then she came along and like a beautiful Zamboni flooded his heart with warmth, scraped away the ugly slushy bits, and dumped them in the empty parking lot of his soul. Howie McLennon, Ottawa, ON Winner, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest He had a way with women that was at first endearing, then gradually engendered caution and finally outright rejection, like potato salad at a summer picnic. Paul Sutcliffe, Pittsburgh, PA Runner-Up, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Mildred, sitting under the hair dryer at The Curl & Go and thumbing through a Victoria's Secret catalogue, felt a shudder and a fleeting moment of commiseration when she saw those tiny thongs the models were sporting in the name of underwear because, as it happened, her own butt cheeks tended to gobble up her Fruit of the Loom For Mature Women white cotton panties like a pair of starving wolverines fighting over a flatfish. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Helen Grainge, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario There is a special pinkness to the sky as the sun rises on a crisp January morning, kissing the clouds, warming the fields, and waking the livestock, who move quietly to their feet and begin to mill about their pens, like patrons in a crowded theater lobby who, instead of waiting to see a show, are waiting to be made into steaks or bacon. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Ward Willats, Felton, CA When the slinky redhead slunk into the throbbing, strobe-lit nightclub, Elwood's eyes fastened on her the way a toilet plunger will fasten onto a hard surface if you shove it down just right, but her returning glance, while smoldering, was actually more caustic and burned his tender ego the way liquid Drano can burn your hand if you spill some on it, having disregarded the manufacturer's warning. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Jeff Treder, Springfield, OR The sharks circled the leaking life raft like a pack of rabid personal-injury attorneys at a five-car pileup, and Clarence could just taste the fear (which tasted like chicken) and wondered morbidly if he too, might taste like chicken. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Wendi Tibbets, San Jose, CA He had a drink in his hand and a hole in his heart, a hole big enough to drive a Honda Odyssey minivan with satellite linked navigation and a multi-angle rearview camera down the anterior vena cava, execute a three-point-turn at the atrioventicular valve (thanks to the rear view camera), then exit the pulmonary artery without ever once scraping the Celestial Blue Metallic finish that comes standard on the EX-L. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Mark Schweizer, Tryon, NC Romance On their first date he'd asked how much she thought Edgar Allan Poe's toe nails would sell for on eBay, and on their second he paid for subway fair with nickels he fished out of a fountain, but he was otherwise charming and she thought that they could have a perfectly tolerable life together. Jessica Sashihara, Martinsville, NJ Winner, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The day Anthony and Charlotta met was a special one, not merely because of the truly magical first encounter of the would-be lovers - they reached for the same pair of chopsticks at The Lucky Dragon's all-you-can-eat Chinese food lunch buffet - but also because it was the day the lizard aliens came to earth and destroyed all of mankind with their poison gas bombs and acid catapults. Krista Holm, Helsinki, Finland Runner-Up, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest While Dame Goodchild fondly watched Lord Peasebody's innocent ward gaze admiringly after Eduardo de Ablo, the china-blue eyes moving upwards from the ancestral sword banging lightly against taut thighs to the carelessly tied cravat framing a swarthy, cicatrized cheek above which black eyes half-hidden by untamed raven locks flashed in challenge and passion, she wondered if Elizabeth knew he got the scar from falling face-first onto his ostler's manure rake. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Margaret Stein, Omaha, NE Her tepid tongue explored my mouth like a confused gopher, the tip giving way to the dorsum, its length and breadth tempting my pharyngeal reflex as no tongue had ever tempted my pharyngeal reflex, our passion alone holding back a filet of sole, pommes frites, and a superb Sauvignon Blanc. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: John J. White, Merritt Island, FL When Big Jim strode into the vertebrate lab, Rebecca's blood froze, not exactly like that of the wood frog, Rana sylvatica, whose intercellular fluid fills with ice crystals, sparing the cells from harm, but now as she visualized its late winter mating frenzy, she felt both oddly desirable and unnaturally jumpy. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Kathryn Nelson, Toledo, OH The patterns of our lives, like the weave of an oriental rug, the tans and reds, the thin silken threads, the thick woolen yarns, the cross weaves or the double hooks, and, yes, even the berber loops that are really out of style these days, sure are hard to figure sometimes. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: John Hardi, Falls Church, VA Science Fiction The Mushroom Men of Knarf were silently advancing on the unsuspecting earthlings, and their thin milky blood ran colder when they smelled spores from fungal toenail infections rising from many of the invaders' feet, for to them it was a wondrous and shocking scent of kinship, homeland, and asexual reproduction. David S Nelson, Falls Church VA Winner, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest David Q5XBT dipped a finger into the protein stream and absorbed the nutrients via his sub-molecular digital transponder, all the while wondering to himself what it must have been like in the pre-days when people used their mouths - shock! - for eating; their should be taut stomachs - ugh! - for something called digesting; and when finger food maybe meant chocolate, fish or - ark! - fingers! Allen Ashley, London, UK Runner-Up, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Quoxintia has it all: a diminutive Zylthusian mate with engorged turquoise pedipalps, thirty-three dutiful larvae ready to pupate any day, and more ensnared Xabridons than she could ever pierce and slowly exsanguinate over a period of weeks, but she doesn't have love or, more fundamentally, the myelinated nervous system that makes complex emotions like love possible. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Nate Renie, Alameda, CA "If you do not surrender to me by the stroke of midnight (Coordinated Universal Time) the Large Hadron Collider along with written and signed formal apology then I will reduce you, your planet, and your so-called 'LHC' to a fine saccharine flour; and then I will take that flour, mix it with milk and raisins and make scones which I will feed to ducks, and I'll take their feathers and make a fantastic feather boa, and it will look stylish, so who's laughing now?" 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Aishia Trueman, Canberra, ACT, Australia Vile Puns What the Highway Department's chief IT guy for the new computerized roadway hated most was listening to the 'smart' components complain about being mixed with asphalt instead of silicon and made into speed bumps instead of graceful vases, like the one today from chip J176: "I coulda had glass; I coulda been a container; I coulda been some bottle, instead of a bump, which is what I am." Brian Brandt, Lansdale, PA Winner, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Niles deeply regretted bringing his own equipment to the company's annual croquet tournament because those were his fingerprints found on the "blunt instrument" that had caused the fatal depression in his boss's skull and now here he stood in court accused of murder, yes, murder in the first degree with mallets aforethought. Linda Boatright, Omaha, NE Runner-Up, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Mrs. Irene Bartlett was so taken with the account of the annihilation of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the transformational moment when Lot's wife was miraculously turned into a pillar of salt, that she became a Shaker. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: John Holmes, St. Petersburg, FL He spotted her as he left the Mudville baseball field, a handsome young woman sipping tea on the front porch swing of her house, and, though the boos and catcalls from today's game still rang in his ears, the Mighty Casey decided that for the first time in his life he would not at all mind being associated with a swing and a Miss. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Tom Wallace, Columbia, SC Yes, mused Gerald, fine-tuning the layout of his seafood buffet, the Coquilles Saint-Jacques would look best among the plates of rock cod and (he had to admit it) the rather overcooked flatfish; yes, right there, he thought, that's where the scallops should go: between a rock and a hard plaice. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: David Hynes, Bromma, Sweden It was a dark and stormy night when, in the course of being snoopy, I happened upon the most extraordinary dog - sitting at an old-school typewriter upon the roof of his doghouse - who grumbled that he was working for peanuts.- Amy Torchinsky, Greensboro, NC Jim Tweedie, Long Beach, WA Although it was late at night and the snow was gently falling, Martin, who had gathered the young maidens together in the village church and was now, at the stroke of midnight, leading them across the town square, responded to the town constable's enquiry as to what he was doing by replying, "I herd the belles on Christmas Day." 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Serena thought bitterly of the ironic juxtaposition of her name and her life, which had changed irrevocably, and for all eternity, on that fateful day when her serenity was punctured by the manly lance of that knight in shiny Armani. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Stan McConnell, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA It wasn't sour grapes - Clementine knew that her parents just plum disapproved of her Kiwi lover; try as she might to explain that the love between the pair was all peachy, she might as well have been comparing apples to oranges, so although she was bananas for him, and the ring was certainly no lemon, she was forced to reply to his "Honey, do you?" with a mournful "You know I just can't elope." 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Kevin Hogg, Cranbrook, BC The veterinarian had suggested the tasty yellow fruit as a way to cure the undiagnosed lack of appetite that was ebbing away the very life of his fluffy little friend and Mark was fraught with anguish as he kept wondering, "Will a chick eat a banana?" 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Nancy Hoffman, Peaks Island, ME When working-class Rosalind had been turned into a frog herself after kissing the enchanted Prince, she and her anguished croaking were shown on countless newsreels worldwide; and even decades after her "15 minutes of fame" had lapsed the problem of upward mobility for working women is still commonly demonstrated by invoking Rosie the Ribbitter. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: John Cavanagh, Deer Island, OR Western "Ahgonagedoo, oosdiggingsuine!!!" screamed Jake Calhoun; but Doc Holliday, the legendary gunfighter/dentist, replied simply, "Smile when you say that, pardner, then swirl and spit out." John Cavanagh, Deer Island, OR Winner, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Tex sauntered into the saloon, tipped his hat towards Miss Kitty seated at the bar, and drawled, "I've been excogitatin', and we don't take kindly to no loquacious sesquipedalians 'round these parts, lessin' they be indigenous" - and with that, subsequently shot dead the visiting chatty professor of English standing next to her. Rick Cheeseman, Waconia, MN Runner-Up, 2013 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions Betty had eyes that said come here, lips that said kiss me, arms and torso that said hold me all night long, but the rest of her body said, "Fillet me, cover me in cornmeal, and fry me in peanut oil"; romance wasn't easy for a mermaid. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Jordan Kaderli, Dallas, TX Derek squeezed through the narrow entrance past irate piles at the bar and pushed deeper into the tight, dark saloon, and brushing aside a stool and settling between ornaments that hung like polyps from the ceiling, he examined the texture of the walls with his fingertips while trying to avoid the gaze of the owner; the perfect bar, he mused, for the socially awkward proctologist. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Max Walker, Bryn Mawr, PA The sunset was like a golden pouring of honey that you find in those breakfast jars in good class hotels, some of which ends up on the linen table cloth, the colour of cirrostratus clouds before they have been sunset-soaked. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: John O'Byrne, Dublin, Ireland Our tale begins with the encounter of two gentlemen; I'm going to describe the second gentleman first. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Mark Donnelly, Co. Wicklow, Ireland To Juliet's mind, he was just a small town Romeo, and - bummer - a Capulet to boot, but the men pickings in Verona were slim, so even though her daddy would have a cat, she decided, "What's the worst that could happen?" 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: John Hardi, Falls Church, VA Tony was unsure if the voice had said, "Sven" or "Ten," but, as no one had ever called him Sven, and the ceiling lights were shining directly into his eyes, and, recognizing the familiar sad, yet concerned, look on the referee's face - he was gonna go with "Ten." 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Warren Blair, Ashburn, VA The dark, drafty old house was lopsided and decrepit, leaning in on itself, the way an aging possum carrying a very heavy, overcooked drumstick in his mouth might list to one side if he were also favoring a torn Achilles tendon, assuming possums have them. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Shethra Jones-Hoopes, Conestoga, PA Daphne had thoroughly researched the subject and concluded that, by all accounts, the medical procedure for reducing the size of her ample derriere was relatively safe but - and it is a big 'but' - she understood there is always an inherent risk involving any surgery. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Clay Wach, Winnipeg, MB The dame that walked into my office was statuesque and looked like she ought to be standing on a bed of roses … in other words, she looked exactly like the garden gnome my ex-wife had stuck in our flower bed, next to a bird bath that attracted a whole lot of bills, much like my in-tray, which was lousy with them. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Jackie Fuchs, Los Angeles, CA It was amidst the chaos of the Loma Prieta tectonic plate shift, while sipping sassafras floats at opposite ends of a busy ice cream bar when, in a serendipitous happenstance of synchronicity, the cranial plates of Laura and Earl also shifted, sending their ocular prosthetics tumbling to the floor where they rolled and rolled until their eyes met across the crowded room. Guy Foisy, Orleans, Ontario 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Todd didn't think he would ever be able to love another woman the way he had loved Lily, but he was really eager to try. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: John Glenn, Tyler, TX Dark and stormy was her disposition; her hair cascaded evenly onto her shoulders in torrents - except at intervening occasions, when it was checked by a violent gust of air from a huge blower (for it is in Hollywood that our scene lies), rattling along her blouse top, and fiercely agitating the scanty fabric that struggled against her implants. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Lee Martinson, Yucaipa, CA "I have always found character introductions at the beginning of novels to be a rather clunky literary device," said Edmond Wordswell of Liston Street, Cambridge, a 39-year-old tax attorney and sufferer of severe lactophobia, the tragic result of having been abandoned in an empty milk bottle carrier as an infant. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Sarah Harper, Silver Spring, MD Martha Lessen broke horses - not in the same way she broke her mother's good china, nor the way she broke the privy door out back of the bunkhouse, not even the way she broke the heart of Gunther Svenson, which, in that case, is quite surprising since one would think breaking a horse and breaking an ass would be quite similar. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Kevin Fry, Callaway, MD Sometimes I look to the sky and pray for something heavy to fall from it and put me out of my misery - something like a baby-grand piano, a bit of space junk, an anvil, or a meteorite; or, better yet, for heavy objects to fall on everyone except me in a biblical downpour of baby-grand pianos, bits of space junk, anvils, and meteorites. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Rani Eimers The dark and foreboding landscape was littered with crumbling castles, collapsed crypts, and earthworks for forgotten fortresses wherein lurked those most dastardly of degenerates, whose blood curdling cries made the lives of the locals a living hell - the historical reenactment society. 2013 Dishonorable Mentions: Phil Davies, Cardiff, UK 2012 As he told her that he loved her she gazed into his eyes, wondering, as she noted the infestation of eyelash mites, the tiny deodicids burrowing into his follicles to eat the greasy sebum therein, each female laying up to 25 eggs in a single follicle, causing inflammation, whether the eyes are truly the windows of the soul; and, if so, his soul needed regrouting. Cathy Bryant, Manchester, England Winning sentence, 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest As an ornithologist, George was fascinated by the fact that urine and feces mix in birds' rectums to form a unified, homogeneous slurry that is expelled through defecation, although eying Greta's face, and sensing the reaction of the congregation, he immediately realized he should have used a different analogy to describe their relationship in his wedding vows. David Pepper, Hermosa Beach, CA Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Adventure The stifling atmosphere inside the Pink Dolphin Bar in the upper Amazon Basin carried barely enough oxygen for a man to survive - humid and thick the air was and full of little flying bugs, making the simple act of breathing like trying to suck hot Campbell's Bean with Bacon soup through a paper straw. Greg Homer, Placerville, CA Winner, 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The shallow cave behind the mighty river's thundering waterfall seemed more like a damp, cold, misty, poorly lit hallway leading from the shower room in some cheap-dive gym under the Elevated train where mugs who couldn't crack the glass jaw of some washed-up palooka on their best sober day still deluded themselves that they could be somebody; and yet, Bill thought, "at least it's got runnin' water." Warren Blair, Ashburn, VA Runner-Up, 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Children's Literature He swaggered into the room (in which he was now the "smartest guy") with a certain Wikipedic insouciance, and without skipping a beat made a beeline towards Dorothy, busting right through her knot of admirers, and she threw her arms around him and gave him a passionate though slightly tickly kiss, moaning softly, "Oooohh, Scarecrow!" David S Nelson, Falls Church, VA Winner, 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Crime She slinked through my door wearing a dress that looked like it had been painted on … not with good paint, like Behr or Sherwin-Williams, but with that watered-down stuff that bubbles up right away if you don't prime the surface before you slap it on, and - just like that cheap paint - the dress needed two more coats to cover her. Sue Fondrie, Appleton, WI Winner, 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest "Chester and Harry, you don't have the stomach for this, but Dick and I do," the leggy blonde said in a throaty voice as she headed back in to finger - and hopefully nail - the brains and muscle of the strong-arm syndicate, the heel that gutted her niece. Bill Hartmann, Dallas, TX Runner-Up, 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Inspector Murphy stood up when he saw me, then looked down at the lifeless body, crumpled like a forlorn Snicker's candy wrapper, and after a knowing glance at Detective Wilson pointed to the darkening crimson pool spreading from the stiff's shattered noggin, and said, "You settle it, Gibson; does that puddle look more like a duck or a cow?" 2012 Dishonorable Mentions: Carl Stich, Mariemont, Ohio The blood seeped out of the body like bad peach juice from a peach that had been left on one side so long the bottom became rotten while it still looked fine on the top but had started to attract fruit flies, and this had the same effect, but with regular flies, that is not say there weren't some fruit flies around because, after all, this was Miami. 2012 Dishonorable Mentions: Howard Eugene Whitright, Seal Beach, CA The smooth hand I was caressing felt as if it belonged to a Persian monk that had been rubbing moisturizing body oils on his fellow monks all day (but not in a gay way, come on, he's a monk for God's sake), when in all actuality the hand belonged to a body that I had just pulled out of the Potomac for forensic investigation. 2012 Dishonorable Mentions: Kevin Bruemmer, San Antonio, TX Bishop threw back the shot of bourbon and reflected on his career as a private dick, a profession he always thought of as perfect for a man named Richard who kept to himself and was often unkind to others. 2012 Dishonorable Mentions: Jon Maddalena, Mesick, Michigan Fantasy The brazen walls of the ancient city of Khoresand, situated where the mighty desert of Sind meets the endless Hyrkanean steppe, are guarded by day by the four valiant knights Sir Malin the Mighty, Sir Welkin the Wake, Sir Darien the Doughty, and Sir Yrien the Yare, all clad in armor of beaten gold, and at night the walls are guarded by Sir Arden the Ardent, Sir Fier the Fearless, Sir Cyril the Courageous, and Sir Damien the Dauntless, all clad in armor of burnished argent, but nothing much ever happens. David Lippmann, Austin, TX Winner, 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Truly, twas Gimoneus the wise, grand sorcerer of Elantorfan, keeper of the ancient rune of Turgochit, came nearest to slaying the mighty dragon of Ralmorgantorg; for he was old and sinewy, and the wretched beast near choked to death on his femur. Warren Wol, Livermore, CA Runner-Up, 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Historical Fiction The "clunk" of the guillotine blade's release reminded Marie Antoinette, quite briefly, of the sound of the wooden leg of her favorite manservant as he not-quite-silently crossed the polished floors of Versailles to bring her another tray of petit fours. Leslie Craven, Hataitai, New Zealand Winner, 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Primum non nocere, from the Latin for "first, do no harm," one of the principal tenets of the Hippocratic oath taken by physicians, was far from David's mind (as he strode, sling in hand, to face Goliath) in part because Hippocrates was born about 100 years after David, in part because David wasn't even a physician, but mainly because David wanted to kill the sucker. David Larson, San Francisco, CA Runner-Up, 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Purple Prose William, his senses roused by a warm fetid breeze, hoped it was an early spring's equinoxal thaw causing rivers to swell like the blood-engorged gumlines of gingivitis, loosening winter's plaque, exposing decay, and allowing the seasonal pot-pouris of Mother Nature's morning breath to permeate the surrounding ether, but then he awoke to the unrelenting waves of his wife's halitosis. Guy Foisy, Orleans, Ontario Winner, 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Corinne considered the colors (palest green, gray and lavender) and texture (downy as the finest velvet) and wondered, "How long have these cold cuts been in my refrigerator?" Linda Boatright, Omaha, NE Runner-Up, 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Haley's crystal eyes surveyed the vista that stretched in front of her like a vast comforter tossed over the form of a slumbering giant to the hills that arose abruptly like the hastily drawn up knees of the giant when he has to reach down and rub the cramp out of his foot that he experiences when he's stretching underneath his vast comforter. 2012 Dishonorable Mentions: Robin Siepel, Bakersfield, CA The drugged parrots pelted the village like a hellish rain of feathered fanny packs stuffed with claws and porridge, rendering Claudia's makeshift rabbit-skin umbrella more symbolic than anything else. 2012 Dishonorable Mentions: Jeff Coleburn, West Chester, PA Romance "I'll never get over him," she said to herself and the truth of that statement settled into her brain the way glitter settles on to a plastic landscape in a Christmas snow globe when she accepted the fact that she was trapped in bed between her half-ton boyfriend and the wall when he rolled over on to her nightgown and passed out, leaving her no way to climb out. Karen Hamilton, Seabrook, TX Winner, 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest "Your eyes are like deep blue pools that I would like to drown in," he had told Kimberly when she had asked him what he was thinking; but what he was actually thinking was that sometimes when he recharges his phone he forgets to put the little plug back in but he wasn't going to tell her that. Dan Leyde, Edmonds, WA Runner-Up, 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Tucked in a dim corner of The Ample Bounty Bar & Grille, Alice welcomed the fervent touch of the mysterious stranger's experienced hands because she had not been this close with a man in an achingly long time and, quivering breathlessly, began to think that this could be the beginning of something real, something forever, and not just a one-time encounter with a good Samaritan who was skilled at the Heimlich Maneuver. 2012 Dishonorable Mentions: Mark Wisnewski, Flanders, NJ Chain-smoking as he stood in the amber glow of the street lamp, he gazed up at the brownstone wherein resided Bunny Morgan, and thought how like a bunny Bunny was, though he had read somewhere that rabbits were coprophages, which meant that they ate their own feces, which was really disgusting now that he thought about it, and nothing like Bunny, at least he hoped not, so on second thought Bunny wasn't like a bunny after all, but she still was pretty hot. 2012 Dishonorable Mentions: Emma DeZordi, Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Quebec Their love began as a tailor, quickly measuring the nooks and crannies of their personalities, but it soon became the seamstress of subterfuge, each of them aware of the others lingual haberdashery: Mindy trying to create a perfectly suited garment to display in public and Stan only concerned with the inseam. 2012 Dishonorable Mentions: D. M. Dunn, Bloomington, IN Science Fiction As I gardened, gazing towards the autumnal sky, I longed to run my finger through the trail of mucus left by a single speckled slug - innocuously thrusting past my rhododendrons - and in feeling that warm slime, be swept back to planet Alderon, back into the tentacles of the alien who loved me. Mary E. Patrick, Lake City, SC Winner, 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The real problem with the "many universes" interpretation of quantum mechanics is that if it's true, then somewhere, in some universe, anything you can possibly imagine has already happened, which means that somewhere, another version of me has already finished writing the rest of this science-fiction novel, so I'm not feeling real inspired to do it myself. Steve Lauducci, Bethlehem, PA Runner-Up, 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Vile Puns Though they were merely strangers on a train, as she looked North by Northwest though the rear window, Marnie knew beyond a shadow of a doubt the trouble with Harry was that he was a psycho - his left and right hand middle fingers (formerly extended in the birds position) were menacingly twisting a rope in the form of a noose; certain of her impending death as surely as she could dial M for Murder, she was overcome by intense vertigo. Amy Torchinsky, Greensboro, NC Winner, 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The two power-hungry, 20-something biographers met with me incognito and settled on penning my memoirs, one on a percentage of future sales and one on upfront remuneration; so there is one yuppie I pay, one yuppie I owe, ghostwriters in disguise. Peter Bjorkman, Rocklin, CA Runner-Up, 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Professor Lemieux had anticipated that his latest paper would be received with skepticism within the small, fractious circle of professional cosmologists, few of whom were prepared to accept his hypothesis that our universe had been created in a marijuana-induced industrial accident by insectoid aliens; nevertheless, he was stung when Hawking airily dismissed it as the Bug Bong Theory. 2012 Dishonorable Mentions: Alan Follett, Hercules, CA Milton's quest for the love of Ms. Bradley was a risk but no sorry trivial pursuit yet he hadn't a clue why she had a monopoly on his heart's desires - in fact, it boggled his mind and caused him great aggravation because, in his checkered and troubled careers, he had always scrabbled hard and it drove him bonkers that she considered life just a game. 2012 Dishonorable Mentions: Linda Boatright, Omaha, NE "Damn!" cussed Shep as he realized that the cattle had busted down their corral again and all the bulls were a splittin'. 2012 Dishonorable Mentions: Lynne Marie Waldron, Spokane, WA Western They still talk about that fateful afternoon in Abilene, when Dancing Dan DuPre moonwalked through the doors of Fat Suzy's saloon, made a passable reverse-turn, pirouetted twice followed by a double box-step, somersaulted onto the bar, drew his twin silver-plated Colt-45s and put twelve bullets through the eyes of the McLuskey sextuplets, on account of them varmints burning down his ranch and lynching his prize steer. Ted Downes, Cardiff, U.K. Winner, 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest He got down from his horse, which seemed strange to him as he had always believed that you got down from a duck or a goose. Terry L. Johnson, Tularosa, NM Runner-Up, 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions Ronald left this world as he entered it: on a frigid winter night, amid frantic screams and blood-soaked linens, while relatives stood nearby and muttered furious promises to find and punish the man responsible. 2012 Dishonorable Mentions: Rebecca Oas, Atlanta, GA Many years have passed since the events related here, but I remember them almost as well as if I had really been there, because I think about them frequently, turning them over and over in my mind, changing the facts to make me into more of a hero than I actually might have been, had I been there to do half the things I claim I did. 2012 Dishonorable Mentions: Thor F. Carden, Madison, TN Her skin was like flocked wallpaper and her eyes had seen better days, but when her bloodless lips murmured "Hi, Sailor," my heart melted from the inside out like one of those chocolate-covered ice cream bars on a summer day that runs down your arm and gets all over your new shirt. 2012 Dishonorable Mentions: James Macdonald, Vancouver, B.C. Her fixed gaze at dinner reminded him so much of an owl that he found himself wondering when she would regurgitate her meal into a pellet and told the waitress they didn't need a dessert menu. 2012 Dishonorable Mentions: Leah Sitkoff, New York, New York The syncopated sound of the single-cylinder steam motor, designed by Mier Vander, reminded Mier of the time his father took him to the Mollen Bros travelling circus to see the "Corpulent Lady" and to sit upon her lap immediately following her lunch of sauerbraten and ale. 2012 Dishonorable Mentions: Jim Tierney, Murrieta, CA 2011 Cheryl's mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories. Sue Fondrie, Oshkosh, WI Winning sentence, 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest As I stood among the ransacked ruin that had been my home, surveying the aftermath of the senseless horrors and atrocities that had been perpetrated on my family and everything I hold dear, I swore to myself that no matter where I had to go, no matter what I had to do or endure, I would find the man who did this … and when I did, when I did, oh, there would be words. Rodney Reed, Ooltewah, TN Runner-Up, 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Adventure From the limbs of ancient live oaks moccasins hung like fat black sausages - which are sometimes called boudin noir, black pudding or blood pudding, though why anyone would refer to a sausage as pudding is hard to understand and it is even more difficult to divine why a person would knowingly eat something made from dried blood in the first place - but be that as it may, our tale is of voodoo and foul murder, not disgusting food. Jack Barry, Shelby, NC Winner, 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Sensing somehow a scudding lay in the offing, Skipper Bob tallied his tasks: reef the mains'l, mizzen, and jib, strike and brail the fores'l, mizzen stays'l and baggywrinkles, bowse the halyards, mainsheets, jacklines and vangs, turtle and belay fast the small cock, flemish the taffrail warps, batten the booby hatch, lay by his sou'wester, and find the bailing bucket. Mike Mayfield, Austin, TX Runner-Up, 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Crime Wearily approaching the murder scene of Jeannie and Quentin Rose and needing to determine if this was the handiwork of the Scented Strangler - who had a twisted affinity for spraying his victims with his signature raspberry cologne - or that of a copycat, burnt-out insomniac detective Sonny Kirkland was sure of one thing: he'd have to stop and smell the Roses. Mark Wisnewski, Flanders, NJ Winner, 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Five minutes before his scheduled execution, Kip found his thoughts turning to his childhood - all those years ago before he had become a contract killer whose secret weakness was a severe peanut allergy, even back before he lost half of a toe in a gardening accident while doing community service - but especially to Corinne, the pretty girl down the street whom he might have ended up marrying one day if she had only shown him a little more damn respect. Andrew Baker, Highland Park, NJ Runner-Up, 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The victim was a short man, with a face full of contradictions: amalgam, composite, dental porcelain, with both precious and non-precious metals all competing for space in a mouth that was open, bloody, terrifying, gaping, exposing a clean set of asymptomatic impacted wisdom teeth, but clearly the object of some very comprehensive dental care, thought Dirk Graply, world-famous womanizer, tough guy, detective, and former dentist. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Terri Daniel, Seattle, WA Historical Fiction Napoleon's ship tossed and turned as the emperor, listening while his generals squabbled as they always did, splashed the tepid waters in his bathtub. John Doble, New York City Winner, 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The executioner sneered as the young queen ascended the stairs to the guillotine; in the old days, he thought, at least there was some buildup, a little time on the rack or some disemboweling, but nowadays everyone wants instant gratification. Andrea Rossi, Wilmington, NC Runner-Up, 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Purple Prose As his small boat scudded before a brisk breeze under a sapphire sky dappled with cerulean clouds with indigo bases, through cobalt seas that deepened to navy nearer the boat and faded to azure at the horizon, Ian was at a loss as to why he felt blue. Mike Pedersen, North Berwick, ME Winner, 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The Los Angeles morning was heavy with smog, the word being a portmanteau of smoke and fog, though in LA the pollutants are typically vehicular emissions as opposed to actual smoke and fog, unlike 19th-century London where the smoke from countless small coal fires often combined with fog off the Thames to produce true smog, though back then they were not clever enough to call it that. Jack Barry, Shelby, NC Runner-Up, 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest LaTrina - knowing he must live - let her hot, wet tongue slide slowly over Gladiator's injured ear, the taste reminding her of the late June flavor of a snow chain that had been removed from a tire and left to rust on the garage floor without being rinsed off. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Betsy Replogle, Nichols Hills, OK Like a bird gliding over the surface of a Wyoming river rippled by a gentle Spring breeze, his hand passed over her stretch marks. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Patty Liverance, Grand Rapids, MI Deep into that particular wet Saturday night ugly blues screamed out from the old man's horn like a hooker being hauled down a flight of stairs, regular thick loud thumps punctuated by nasty and erratic sharp barks. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: John Benson, Carthage, MO She held my hand as if she were having a swollen barrel of fun which was off considering that my teeth were sitting on my bathroom cabinet (eight miles away, no less) and my elbow was peeling like a soggy coconut, the fine hairs of which were standing on edge in fear, as if the coconut had been reading "Dracula." 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: James Hearn, Canterbury, Kent, U.K. Romance As the dark and mysterious stranger approached, Angela bit her lip anxiously, hoping with every nerve, cell, and fiber of her being that this would be the one man who would understand - who would take her away from all this - and who would not just squeeze her boob and make a loud honking noise, as all the others had. Ali Kawashima, Greensboro, NC Winner, 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Deanna waited for him in a deliberate pose on the sailor-striped chaise lounge of the newly-remodeled Ramada, her bustier revealing the tops of her white breasts like eggs - eggs of the slightly undercooked, hard-boiled variety, showing a nascent jiggle with her apprehensive breath, eggs that were then peeled ever-so-carefully so as not to pierce the jellied, opaque albumen and unleash the longing, viscous yolk within - yes, she lay there, oblong and waiting to be deviled. Meredith K. Gray, Ithaca, NY Runner-Up, 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest They called her The Cat, because she made love the way she fought, rolling rapidly across the floor in a big, blurry ball of shrieking hair, fury, and dander, which usually solicited a "Shut up!" and flung shoe from one of the neighbors, and left her exhilarated lover with serious patchy bald spots and the occasional nicked ear. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Lisa Kluber, San Francisco, CA She gazed smolderingly at the mysterious rider, his body cloaked in enough shining black leather to outfit an Italian furniture store, wrapped so tightly each muscle stood out like a flamboyant Mexican hairdresser at an Alabamian monster truck rally; and he met her gaze with an intensity that couldn't have been matched by even a starving junkyard dog in the meat aisle of a suburban supermarket. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Chris Kemp, Annapolis, MD Sci Fi Morgan "Bamboo" Barnes, Star Pilot of the Galaxia (flagship of the Solar Brigade), accepted an hors d'oeuvre from the triangular-shaped platter offered to him from the Princess Qwillia - lavender-skinned she was and busty, with two of her four eyes what Barnes called "bedroom eyes" - and marveled at how on her planet, Chlamydia-5, these snacks were called "Hi-Dee-Hoes" but on Earth they were simply called Ritz Crackers with Velveeta. Greg Homer, Placerville, CA Winner, 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Sterben counted calcium bars in the storage chamber, wondering why women back on Earth paid him little attention, but up here they seem to adore him, in fact, six fraichemaidens had already shown him their blinka. Elizabeth Muenster, Columbia, PA Runner-Up, 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Fantasy Within the smoking ruins of Keister Castle, Princess Gwendolyn stared in horror at the limp form of the loyal Centaur who died defending her very honor; "You may force me to wed," she cried at the leering and victorious Goblin King, "but you'll never be half the man he was." Terri Daniel, Seattle, WA Winner, 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Veronica, two months pregnant and attempting to get her boyfriend to notice, and Ricky, who wanted to end things with his expansive girlfriend, sat at a table-for-two around lunchtime at the Olive Garden in Columbus, Ohio, eying the bottle of house rose which, unbeknownst to them, doubled as the portal key to Khrysandelt: The land where everything glitters slightly more than normal. Andrew Allingham, Fairfax, VA Runner-Up, 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Vile Puns Detective Kodiak plucked a single hair from the bearskin rug and at once understood the grisly nature of the crime: it had been a ferocious act, a real honey, the sort of thing that could polarize a community, so he padded quietly out the back to avoid a cub reporter waiting in the den. Joe Wyatt, Amarillo, TX Winner, 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Monroe Mills' innovative new fabric-dyeing technique was a huge improvement over stone-washing: denim apparel was soaked in color and cured in an 800-degree oven, and the company's valued young dye department supervisor was as skilled as they came; yes, no one could say Marilyn was a normal jean baker. Marvin Veto, Greensboro, NC Runner-Up, 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Convinced that the fabled Lost Treasure of Eggsbury was concealed within the statue of the beloved Sister Mary Francis in the village square, Professor Smithee would steal away in the darkest hour of each night to try to silently chip away at her impervious granite vestments - a vain and fruitless nightly exercise, he well knew, but it was a hard habit to break. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Rodney Reed, Ooltewah, TN Milton's quest for the love of Ms. Bradley was a risk but no sorry trivial pursuit, yet he hadn't a clue why she had a monopoly on his heart's desires - in fact, it boggled his mind and caused him great aggravation because, in his checkered and troubled careers, he had always scrabbled hard and it drove him bonkers that she considered life just a game. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Linda Boatright, Omaha, NE Western The laser-blue eyes of the lone horseman tracked the slowly lengthening lariat of a Laredo dawn as it snaked its way through Dead Man's Pass into the valley below and snared the still sleeping town's tiny church steeple in a noose of light with the oh-so-familiar glow of a Dodge City virgin's last maiden blush. Graham Thomas, St. Albans, Hertfordshire, U.K Winner, 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Sunburned and lost, Jake tightened the noose around Randy's diaper-white neck and growled, "Any last words, varmint?" to which Randy replied, "Don't be afraid to go out on a limb, Jake - that's where all the fruit is!" which marked the first and last time Jake and the boys hired a life coach to lead one of their cattle drives. Lisa Kluber, San Francisco, CA Runner-Up, 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions Rosy lips aquiver, Lauren drizzled with tears the wave-tousled sands of Wampauset Municipal Area Public Access Beach, hearing in every shriek of shrike and plaint of plover the ancient wail - kreeAHH, kreeAHH! - of good women widowed by the sea, as well as tonal nuances indicating the shorebirds' relative levels of copulative receptiveness, for our umber-eyed heroine is both lover and ornithologist. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Anna Springfield, Raleigh, NC Business was kinda slow at the "If You Build It" sperm bank. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Simon Petrie, Hawker ACT, AUSTRALIA Day broke upon the Baroness von Hestach with the pitiable insistence of all that she despised - a gray and unattractive intrusion into her sumptuous bedchamber, much like the Baron. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Holly Kohler, Concord, MA No one walked down Bleak Street at night - not where hobgoblins hobnobbed, skeletons skulked, vampires vamped, and the dumpster behind the Chinese buffet smelled like zombies. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Bill Hartmann, Dallas, TX Dawn crept up like the panther on the gazelle, except it was light, not dark like a panther, and a panther, though quiet, could never be as silent as the light of dawn, so really the analogy doesn't hold up well, as cool as it sounds, but it still is a great way to begin a story; just not necessarily this particular one. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Warren Blair, Ashburn, VA As the young officer studied the oak door, he was reminded of his girlfriend - for she was also slightly unhinged, occasionally sticky, and responded well to being stripped and given a light oiling. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Ian Fishlock, Harrow, London U.K. The beast lumbered toward the maiden, its fetid breath announcing its presence to her (since she couldn't see him due to the blindfold her captors had tied around her head), its jaws gaping open like a sub sandwich with too much meat, so that no matter how hard you try, you can't possibly keep the lettuce or the tomatoes from squeezing out onto the table or, worse, your lap. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Donna P. Titus, Freeland, PA All the signs, both actual and imagined, made it immensely clear there was trouble ahead for Marlene and, yet, her childlike sense of hope that maybe he was "the one" kept her foot on the accelerator pedal of life even when she came to the "bridge out" warning handwritten in Magic Marker on Myron's Polident cup. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Karen Arutunoff, Tulsa, OK The grisly scene before him was like nothing Detective Smith had ever seen before, but there were millions and millions of things he had never seen before, and he couldn't help but wonder which of them it was. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Sean Griffin, Tacoma, WA Maggie said they were birthmarks and they very well could be, but the three very small black moles in a horizontal line just above her right eyebrow looked like an ellipsis to some, but to others who did not know what an ellipsis was, they looked like three very small black moles in a horizontal line just above Maggie's right eyebrow. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Betty Jean Murray, Richland, TX As she downed the last Dixie cup of Listerine and let every drop of its 21.6 percent alcohol content hit her like an icy mint anti-cavity brickbat, Karen squinted at the breasts dangling like two electrocuted ospreys from the powerline of her heart and, with a despondency born of a thousand nights spent gaining a decent skill level at internet mahjong, wondered how she and they had all three sunk so low. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Anna Springfield, Raleigh, NC Her flaming red hair whipped in the wind like a campfire, stroking the embers of passion hidden within the hearth of my heart and I began to burn with a desire that seared me to my very core - oh the things that I would do if only I weren't incarcerated for arson! 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Aubrey Johnson, Edmonton, AB, Canada Carmela's knees buckled and she (a responsible consumer) collapsed down onto the sidewalk, as her environmentally green grocery bag bounced - spewing forth organic mixed lettuces, crispy eco-friendly cucumbers, juicy natural cherry tomatoes, home-grown herbs - while in perfect synchronization, a recyclable plastic bottle burst open, spraying droplets of Lite-Italian dressing upon the freshly tossed salad. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Margie Parker, Weeki Wachee, FL After five years as a freelance writer, Greg finally managed to double his income, letting him add a processed cheese product slice to the baloney sandwiches he had for breakfast, lunch and dinner. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Lawrence Person, Austin, TX The mostly, but not quite, extinguished fire's dying embers writhed upon the floor like tiny little wasps which someone has just stuck in the abdomen with a needle, and they are frantically contracting around the metal protrusion in their gut in a desperate effort to remove it which, let's face it, is hopeless so they are just slowly dying and good riddance to them too, because unlike bees - which actually have some purpose in the world - wasps are just mean, ornery wastes of space, and who can blame someone for spearing them? 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Darian McGee, Petal, MS "Bleeeck!" nine-year-old prince Crawthula, lord of Undaria and heir to the vampire throne, cried as the lollypop, expertly wielded by his irksome sister, left a bright red gooey smear across his pale cheek, shattering the image of tranquility he was ineffectually trying to maintain in front of his undead ministers and beginning the tirade that resulted in them both being sent to coffin before the first human had been brought out to feast on. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Eric A. Vanderburg, Cleveland, OH They kissed with the fury and suction of a dart that was shot onto the back of the bus driver's fat bald head by the red-headed kid that was too big for his age (the rumor was he was "held back") and everyone knew was going to end up in prison, or perhaps a prop comic if he straightened out in time. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: D. Drake Daggett, Omro, WI Awakened by a howling wind snapping branches against her new but poorly installed storm windows, Stella heard another sound she found puzzling so, grabbing her trusty Colt Python, she snuck stealthily downstairs to find an oddly-dressed gnome-like man methodically dropping breath mints onto her freshly-waxed kitchen floor. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Ann Hammack, Pittsboro,NC "You're not in Kansas anymore, people!" the gruff Marine Captain bellowed as I wheeled myself along the tarmac of Planet Cliche, the only place in the Galaxy where you could mine Unobtainium, undergo the powerful Eywa ritual with a blue eight-foot-tall alien Princess, and discover a hunter-gatherer people who despite decades of human contact still hadn't developed the wheel, the composite bow, or toilet paper. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: Adrian McKinty Urgh the howler monkey was sort of the leader of his troop, though not old enough to be a silverback and not having fathered more than a couple of sons, but he did know where the good berries were and how to avoid the leopards, anacondas, and especially the hairless apes, the ones who crashed through the forest only to stand behind a tree and breathe noisily, and watch them and sometimes leave bunches of those disgusting bananas. 2011 Dishonorable Mentions: David S. Nelson, Falls Church, VA 2010 For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss - a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil. Molly Ringle, Seattle, WA Winning sentence, 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Through the verdant plains of North Umbria walked Waylon Ogglethorpe and, as he walked, the clouds whispered his name, the birds of the air sang his praises, and the beasts of the fields from smallest to greatest said, "There goes the most noble among men" - in other words, a typical stroll for a schizophrenic ventriloquist with delusions of grandeur. Tom Wallace, Columbia, SC Runner-Up, 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Adventure The blazing equatorial sun beat down on Simon's head and shoulders as he dug feverishly in the hot sand with the ivory shoe-horn his mother had given him before the homecoming game with Taft, when the field was so wet that he'd lost his low-tops seven times in the cold sucking mud. Adam McDonough, Reedsburgh, WI Winner, 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest When Hru-Kar, the alpha-ranking male of the silver-backed gorilla tribe finished unleashing simian hell on Lt. Cavendish, the once handsome young soldier from Her Majesty's 47th Regiment resembled nothing so much as a crumpled up piece of khaki-colored construction paper that had been dipped in La Victoria chunky salsa. Greg Homer, Placerville, CA Runner-Up, 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Children's Literature "Please Mr. Fox, don't take your magic back to the forest, it is needed here in Twigsville!" pleaded little Isabel, but Mr. Fox was unconcerned as he smugly loped back into the woods without answering a word knowing well that his magic was only going to be used to make sure his forest would be annexed into the neighboring community of Leaftown where the property values were much higher. Pete Watkins, Broken Arrow, OK Winner, 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Detective She walked into my office wearing a body that would make a man write bad checks, but in this paperless age you would first have to obtain her ABA Routing Transit Number and Account Number and then disable your own Overdraft Protection in order to do so. Steve Lynch, San Marcos, CA Winner, 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest As Holmes, who had a nose for danger, quietly fingered the bloody knife and eyed the various body parts strewn along the dark, deserted highway, he placed his ear to the ground and, with his heart in his throat, silently mouthed to his companion, "Arm yourself, Watson, there is an evil hand afoot ahead." Dennis Pearce, Lexington, KY Runner-Up, 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Fantasy Fiction The wood nymph fairies blissfully pranced in the morning light past the glistening dewdrops on the meadow thistles by the Old Mill, ignorant of the daily slaughter that occurred just behind its lichen-encrusted walls, twin 20-ton mill stones savagely ripping apart the husks of wheat seed, gleefully smearing the starchy entrails across their dour granite faces in unspeakable botanical horror and carnage - but that's not our story; ours is about fairies! Rick Cheeseman, Waconia, MN Winner, 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Historical Fiction In Southwestern Germany just east of the Luxemburg border and north of France where history pitted various related Hapsburg Royals against each other and the Archbishops of Trier, the Abbots of St. Maximin, various members of the nobility, and mobs of axe-bearing villagers, there stands a ruin whose building stones mostly were carted off to build other buildings. Mary Ann R Unger, Ewing, NJ Winner, 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The band of pre-humans departed the cave in search of solace from the omnipresent dangers found there knowing that it meant survival of their kind, though they probably didn't understand it intellectually since their brains were so small and undeveloped but fundamentally they understood that they didn't like big animals that ate them. Mike Mayfield, Austin, TX Runner-Up, 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Purple Prose The dark, drafty old house was lopsided and decrepit, leaning in on itself, the way an aging possum carrying a very heavy, overcooked drumstick in his mouth might list to one side if he were also favoring a torn Achilles tendon, assuming possums have them. Scott Davis Jones, Valley Village, CA Winner, 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The wind whispering through the pine trees and the sun reflecting off the surface of Lake Tahoe like a scattering of diamonds was an idyllic setting, while to the south the same sun struggled to penetrate a sky choked with farm dust and car exhaust over Bakersfield, a town spread over the lower San Joaquin Valley like a brown stain on a wino's trousers, which is where, unfortunately, this story takes place. Dennis Doberneck, Paso Robles, CA Runner-Up, 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Elaine was a big woman, and in her tiny Smart car, stakeouts were always hard for her, especially in the August sun where the humidity made her massive thighs, under her lightweight cotton dress, stick together like two walruses in heat. 2010 Dishonorable Mentions: Derek Renfro, Ringgold, GA The Zinfandel poured pinkly from the bottle, like a stream of urine seven hours after eating a bowl of borscht. 2010 Dishonorable Mentions: Alf Seegert, Salt Lake City, UT Romance "Trent, I love you," Fiona murmered, and her nostrils flared at the faint trace of her lover's masculine scent, sending her heart racing and her mind dreaming of the life they would live together, alternating sumptuous world cruises with long, romantic interludes in the mansion on his private island, alone together except for the maids, the cook, the butler, and Dirk and Rafael, the hard-bodied pool boys. Paul Chafe, Toronto, ON Winner, 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest She purred sensually, oozing allure that was resisted only by his realization as an entomologist that the protein dust on the couch from the filing of her crimson nails was now being devoured by dust mites in a clicking, ferocious, ecstatic frenzy. Jonathan Blay, Bedford, NS, Canada Runner-Up, 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Cynthia had washed her hands of Philip McIntyre - not like you wash your hands in a public restroom when everyone is watching you to see if you washed your hands but like washing your hands after you have been working in the garden and there is dirt under your fingernails - dirt like Philip McIntyre. 2010 Dishonorable Mentions: Linda Boatright, Omaha, NE Science Fiction t'Bleen and Golxxm squelched their way romantically along the slough beach beneath the three Sommodian moons, their eye-stalks occasionally touching, and tenderly belched sweet nothings like, "I don't think I've ever had such a charming evening," and, "Say, would you like to gnaw that hunk of suppurating tissue off my dorsal appendage - it really itches." Greg Homer, Placerville, CA Winner, 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Vile Puns It was a risky production unlike any mounted prior on the Met stage, the orchestra first imitating the perpetually beating heart of a man walled-in while in pursuit of wine, and then a soprano singing the plaintive aria of a barely alive woman stuffed up a chimney as her ancestral home was destroyed; however, it certainly was Opera Poe. Amy Torchinsky, Greensboro NC Winner, 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest As Jeffrey Hicks, the event safety coordinator for the Renaissance Festival finished posting the revised standards for weaponry, he thought of the day an unleashed dog wandered onto the jousting field, causing the rider from Indianapolis to stop short, impaling himself on the butt of his spear, and the following day's newspaper headline which read: "Stray Injures Indy Knight, Hicks Changing Lances." Marvin Veto, Greensboro, NC Runner-Up, 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Wearing his new slacks from L.L. Bean, and entering the pen to feed his three big dogs their usual three cans of dog food, some of which ended up on his new pants, Kevin then left the house to attend a revival screening of Serpico with Alpo chinos. 2010 Dishonorable Mentions: Greg Homer, Placerville, CA Western He walked into the bar and bristled when all eyes fell upon him - perhaps because his build was so short and so wide, or maybe it was the odor that lingered about him from so many days and nights spent in the wilds, but it may just have been because no one had ever seen a porcupine in a bar before. Linda Boatright, Omaha, NE Winner, 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions His chest glistened like a pumpkin seed, either one fresh out of the pumpkin but with all the orange strands of pumpkin flesh removed, or one straight out of the oven after being coated in just the right amount of oil and then baked; the point is that it was smooth, fairly shiny, and that color. Jesse Kolman, Phoenix, AZ2010 Dishonorable Mentions: The life-saving salve had not arrived to help Dr. Sybil Carter dress the mutant killer bee wounds because landslides blocked roads, the rivers were jammed by earthquake debris, and even the jungle foot paths were clogged with dead bees and their victims, yet without the medicinal unguent, many more would die, so reluctantly giving in to her promise never again to speak to her aviator ex-boyfriend, she picked up the radio and begged him to fly in the ointment. David K. Lynch, Topanga, CA2010 Dishonorable Mentions: Faintly silhouetted against the shadowy murk of a nameless Devonian sea, the Megalodont shark was unaware of trilobites foraging in the primordial ooze not far below, trilobites that unlike the shark's cartilaginous being would become part of the fossil record of an ancient seabed that would in time heave up, dry out and go through the crusher at the Marulan Cement Works somewhere north of Sydney, Australia. 2010 Dishonorable Mentions: John Mackesy, Victoria, Australia Leaning back comfortably in a plush old chair, feet up, fingers laced behind his head, Tom Chambers inventoried his life and with a satisfied grin mused, "Ah, marlin fishing off the coast of Majorca, a bronze star for that rescue mission in Jamir, the unmatched fragrance of pastries fresh out of the oven at Cafe Legrande, two sons who would make any father proud … I've never done any of that." 2010 Dishonorable Mentions: Ernie Santilli, Drexel Hill PA Living next door to the Lesters for nearly twelve years now, Mrs. Nestor, fully aware of her husband's fondness for pulchritudinous posteriors, was unable to deter Chester Nestor's constant quest for Mr. Lester's sister Hester's monster keister. 2010 Dishonorable Mentions: Jeff Flegel, Racine, WI As Ethel arranged the list of company phone numbers under her clear plastic desk cover, perfectly aligning the lower right corner of the list with the lower right corner of the plastic, then swiveled her chair to file one more inter-office memorandum on trimming the budget, she considered how different her life might have been if her parents had named her Tiffany. 2010 Dishonorable Mentions: Judy Fischer, Prospect, KY As the under-appreciated autumn evening faded into yet another soft black velvet fall night, all creatures large and small had settled in except for one, Loupy, the Schipperke, whose job was to keep Anatoly, the night watchman, informed of all things pertaining to the property with her signature uninterrupted warning barks which at this very moment would not subside until her master explained, "We don't know anyone named Timmy and we don't have a well." 2010 Dishonorable Mentions: Karen Arutunoff, Tulsa, OK "You ask me, 'Why did you do it, Charlie, I could've been a contender?' - I'll tell you why: you worked your fights in too close, taking blow after unnecessary blow; I knew you were going to end up punchdrunk and need money for a nurse, and you were never a contender, you were only a referee." 2010 Dishonorable Mentions: Charles Alworth, Port Aransas, TX After launching the last brown lump of chewing tobacco from his bulbous and stained lower lip to its new landing on the Main Street pavement below, Billy Bob couldn't believe that what lay before him, was a spitting image of George Washington. 2010 Dishonorable Mentions: Heidi Vazquez, Bellevue, NE Oneida Revere picked at her meal and stared dully across the table at the charismatic charlatan who had seduced her with the illusion of love and tarnished her family's sterling reputation; she was wise to his bent mind games and though it felt like a knife through her heart, she knew it was time to stick a fork in it and call it done - her days of spooning with Uri Geller were over. 2010 Dishonorable Mentions: Terri Daniel (Seattle, WA) and Craig Rieger (Concord, CA) 2009 Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blown' off Nantucket Sound from nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests. David McKenzie, Federal Way, WA Winning sentence, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The wind dry-shaved the cracked earth like a dull razor - the double edge kind from the plastic bag that you shouldn't use more than twice, but you do; but Trevor Earp had to face it as he started the second morning of his hopeless search for Drover, the Irish Wolfhound he had found as a pup near death from a fight with a prairie dog and nursed back to health, stolen by a traveling circus so that the monkey would have something to ride. Warren Blair, Ashburn, VA Runner-Up, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Fleur looked down her nose at Guilliame, something she was accomplished at, being six foot three in her stocking feet, and having one of those long French noses, not pert like Bridget Bardot's, but more like the one that Charles De Gaulle had when he was still alive and President of France and he wore that cap that was shaped like a little hatbox with a bill in the front to offset his nose, but it didn't work. Marguerite Ahl, Prescott Valley, AZ Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Adventure How best to pluck the exquisite Toothpick of Ramses from between a pair of acrimonious vipers before the demonic Guards of Nicobar returned should have held Indy's full attention, but in the back of his mind he still wondered why all the others who had agreed to take part in his wife's holiday scavenger hunt had been assigned to find stuff like a Phillips screwdriver or blue masking tape. Joe Wyatt, Amarillo, TX Winner, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest In a flurry of flame and fur, fangs and wicker, thus ended the world's first and only hot air baboon ride. Tony Alfieri, Los Angeles, CA Runner-Up, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Karen Buffalo, sensing that her 1894 Brassic & Middon .45 calibre revolvers, mounted with mother-of-pearl grips and clasped by ivory buttons carved in the shape of elephants at play, were no match for "Duke" Bunton's double-barreled shotgun, muttered under her breath "Darn that Parisian gunsmith in the Fourteenth Arrondisement!" Mark A. Gray, Wokingham, Berks., U.K. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Detective She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida - the pink ones, not the white ones - except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn't wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren't. Eric Rice, Sun Prairie, WI Winner, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The dame sauntered silently into Rocco's office, but she didn't need to speak; the blood-soaked gown hugging her ample curves said it all: "I am a shipping heiress whose second husband was just murdered by Albanian assassins trying to blackmail me for my rare opal collection," or maybe, "Do you know a good dry cleaner?" Tony Alfieri, Los Angeles, CA Runner-Up, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The appearance of a thin red beam of light under my office door and the sound of one, then two pair of feet meant my demise was near, that my journey from gum-shoe detective to international agent had gone horribly wrong, until I realized it was my secretary teasing her cat with a laser pointer. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Steve Lynch, San Marcos, CA After quickly scrutinizing the two dangerously buff men coming toward her in the dark and wondering whether she could take them both out, P.I. Velma Plusch mentally inventoried her arsenal - two pistols, two stiletto-clad feet, two leather-gloved hands, two each eyes, ears, lips, and breasts - and decided that she could. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Donna Kain, Ph.D., Greenville, NC Detective Pierson mentally reviewed the group of suspects milling around the recent crime scene - two young siblings eating gingerbread, a young girl in a red hoodie, a beautiful girl with narcolepsy, and seven little people with the profession of miners - then gave his statement of "It's a grim tale" to the press. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Shannon Gray, Wichita, KS Darnell knew he was getting hung out to dry when the D.A. made him come clean by airing other people's dirty laundry; the plea deal was a new wrinkle and there were still issues to iron out, but he hoped it would all come out in the wash - otherwise he had folded like a cheap suit for nothing. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Lynn Lamousin, Baton Rouge, LA I entered the bedroom again, looking for anything the killer might have missed in his obvious attempt to clean the crime scene, when it hit me, the victim hadn't been eating just any potato salad, it was German potato salad, the kind usually served warm, with bacon and although most people prefer the traditional American potato salad, it was clear that this victim didn't, oh no, he didn't prefer it at all. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Lisa Lindquist-Perez, Daytona Beach, FL It was a quarter 'til eight in the ninth precinct when I got the call of a possible two-eleven at a nearby Seven-Eleven that turned out to be just a four-fifteen - that is until my number two from the ninth discovered the one-eight-seven under the Tenth Street Bridge, some two-bit mob soldier with a blossom of five .357's right in the ten-ring. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Jeff Riley, Fort Worth, TX Fantasy Fiction A quest is not to be undertaken lightly - or at all! - pondered Hlothgar, Thrag of the Western Boglands, son of Glothar, nephew of Garthol, known far and wide as Skull Dunker, as he wielded his chesty stallion Hralgoth through the ever-darkening Thlargwood, beyond which, if he survived its horrors and if Hroglath the royal spittle reader spoke true, his destiny awaited - all this though his years numbered but fourteen. Stuart Greenman, Seattle, WA Winner, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Towards the dragon's lair the fellowship marched - a noble human prince, a fair elf, a surly dwarf, and a disheveled copyright attorney who was frantically trying to find a way to differentiate this story from Lord of the Rings. Andrew Manoske, Foster City, CA Runner-Up, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Historical Fiction The Cunard "Carinthia" glided through the starry waters of the Bering Sea, 843 passengers aboard, including Harriet Dobbs, resignedly single for over a decade, while a nautical mile due west slunk the K-18 submarine, under the command of lonely Ukrainian Captain First Rank Nikolai Shevchenko: ships that passed in the night (although the second technically a boat). Dr. Sarah Cockram, Edinburgh, U.K. Winner, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest On a fine summer morning during the days of the Puritans, the prison door in the small New England town of B----n opened to release a convicted adulteress, the Scarlet Letter A embroidered on her dress, along with the Scarlet Letters B through J, a veritable McGuffey's Reader of Scarlet Letters, one for each little tyke waiting for her at the gate. Joseph Aspler, Kirkland, QC, Canada Runner-Up, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Purple Prose The gutters of Manhattan teemed with the brackish slurry indicative of a significant though not incapacitating snowstorm three days prior, making it seem that God had tripped over Hoboken and spilled his smog-flavored slurpie all over the damn place. Eric Stoveken, Allentown, PA Winner, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Warily - as if his hands were a green-bean casserole in a non-tempered glass dish that had just come out of the freezer, and the patient was an oven that had been preheating for a good 75 minutes at 450F - the surgeon slowly reached into the incision and groped for the bullet fragment in the pancreas, at last finding it nestled near one of the Islets of Langerhans like a small wrecked lifeboat foundered on a sandbar as it floated in the fog, adrift in the Sea of John's Innards. Christin Keck, Akron OH Runner-Up, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Mortimer froze in his tracks; the rhythmic clicking on the stones of the path (well … not really a clicking sound so much as a kind of clinking sound, more like the noise made by shaking a charm bracelet filled with Disney characters to a salsa beat) made him suddenly realize he had forgotten to buckle one of his galoshes. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Rick Cheeseman, Waconia, MN Without warning, their darting tongues entwined, like a couple of nightcrawlers fresh from the baitshop - their moist, twisting bodies finally snapping apart, not unlike an old man's muddy galosh being yanked away from his patent leather shoe. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Matt Dennison, Erie, PA She expected a beautiful morning after the previous night's hard rain but instead stepped out her door to a horrible vision of drowned earthworms covering the walkway - their bodies curled and swirled like limp confetti after a party crashed by firefighters. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Rita Hammett, Boca Raton, Florida The first time I saw her she took my breath away with her long blonde hair that flowed over her shoulders like cheese sauce on a bed of nachos, making my stomach grumble as she stepped into the room, her red knit dress locking in curves better than a Ferrari at a Grand Prix. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Harol Hoffman-Meisner, Greensboro, NC He slowly ran his fingers through her long black hair, which wasn't really black because she used Preference by L'Oreal to color it (because "she was worth it"); her carrot-colored roots were starting to show, and it reminded him of the time he'd covered his car's check engine light with black electrical tape, but a faint orange glow still shone around the edges. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Lisa Mileusnich, Willoughby, OH Their relationship hit a bump in the road, not the low, graceful kind of bump, reminiscent of a child's choo choo train-themed roller coaster, rather the kind of tall, narrow speed-bump that, if a school bus ran over it, would cause even a fat kid to fly up and bang his head on the ceiling. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Michael Reade, Durham, NC It was a dark and stormy night, well, not pitch dark so much a plumby, you know, that time of night where it turns into that kind of eggplant color, which I hate - eggplant not the time of night - and it wasn't stormy so much as drizzly, like a cold that's not so bad but really annoying, where you sound a little plugged up and all your mucus just sort of hovers at the edge of your nostrils or drips down the back of your throat, it was like that. Maisey Yates, Jacksonville, OR 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Michael Reade, Durham, NC Romance Melinda woke up suddenly to the sound of her trailer being pounded with wind and hail, and she couldn't help thinking that if she had only put her prized hog up for adoption last May, none of this would be happening, no one would have gotten hurt, and she wouldn't be left with only nine toes, or be living in a mobile home park in Nebraska with a second-rate trapeze artist named Fred. Ada Marie Finkel, Boston, MA Winner, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The first time I saw her she took my breath away with her long blonde hair that flowed over her shoulders like cheese sauce on a bed of nachos, making my stomach grumble as she stepped into the room, her red knit dress locking in curves better than a Ferrari at a Grand Prix. Harol Hoffman-Meisner, Greensboro, NC Runner-Up, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest As she slowly drove up the long, winding driveway, Lady Alicia peeked out the window of her shiny blue Mercedes and spied Rodrigo the new gardener standing on a grassy mound with his long black hair flowing in the wind, his brown eyes piercing into her very soul, and his white shirt open to the waist, revealing his beautifully rippling muscular chest, and she thought to herself, "I must tell that lazy idiot to trim the hedges by the gate." 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Kathryn Minicozzi, Bronx, NY Science Fiction The golden, starry wonders of the dark universe unfurled before the brave interstellar vessel "Argus" like a black flag of victory with a whole bunch of holes in it as the mysterious mission buoyantly commenced that would one day resolve critical questions about space, time, and the appropriate ratio of nuts to chips in a perfect chocolate chip cookie. Robert Friedman, Skillman, NJ Winner, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest George scratched his head in abject puzzlement as he tried to figure out where he'd parked the rocket this time in the 100-acre parking lot of Nallmart 75B, but then he remembered that a ship-boy had taken his DNA key - but which one, the kelly-toned humanoid or the atmosphere-of-Rylak-hued android; scanning the horizon, he at last turned to Babs and asked "how green was my valet"? Harol Hoffman-Meisner, Greensboro, NC Runner-Up, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Spy Fiction Oliver Smith, spy on Her Majesty's service - not that she knew about it, because that tended to spoil the whole secrecy thing and really, who'd want an un-secret spy, anyway? Not to mention that any spy worth his salt would kill anybody who knew his identity … so I wouldn't go around mentioning that I read this if I were you - looked both ways before crossing the street. Rafaela Canetti, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Winner, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The serrated butter knife tossed capriciously onto the 38th Street sidewalk amid the detritus of Salem cigarette butts and a Mentos box was devoid of zero trans fat margarine, but glinted invitingly in the sunlight nonetheless, poised for the opportunity to be repurposed to cut up a Snuggie, and Vladimir took it. Amy E. Gross, Fair Lawn, NJ Runner-Up, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Vile Puns Using her flint knife to gut the two amphibians, Kreega the Neanderthal woman created the first pair of open-toad sandals. Greg Homer, Placerville, CA Winner, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Medusa stared at the two creatures approaching her across the Piazza and, instantly recognizing them as Spanish Gorgons, attempted to stall them by greeting them in their native tongue, "Gorgons, Hola!" Eric Davies, Dunedin, New Zealand Runner-Up, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Eyeing the towering stacks of food colouring that formed the secret to his billion-dollar batik textile empire, grumpy Old Man Griffington was forced to admit that dye mounds are a churl's best friend. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Janine Beacham, Busselton, Western Australia Western He was the desert nightmare whose name no one dared breathe, this deadly gun-slinger Garth Tedder, whose face struck terror in the hearts of man and beast, its macabre, round, maroon cheeks almost exactly like the pickled beets that farmers' wives force-fed their horrified families. Brett Hawkins, Burleson, TX Winner, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest There stood Tex Omaha, fillin' his canteen with his last bottle of Fiji water - a case of which, oddly, he'd got off an Irishman travelin' west on the railroad - 'cause it's good water, better than the dirt-brown stuff at the waterhole that tastes like a rusty nail, worth the two buffalo hides he traded for it, and it'll keep him cool, calm and well-hydrated while he's huntin' down that dirty, no-good Scots-English cattle rustler, Angus "Shorthorn" Hereford. Eric Davies, Dunedin, New Zealand Runner-Up, 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions "I want you to follow my husband," said my newest client, the enigmatic Mrs Yogi, estranged wife of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Steve Heckman, Taylors, SC Automotive power and the color red proved fatal to Santino; Sophia found his body wrapped around the exposed custom pistons of his ruined Ferrari Testarossa, and remembered the morning she found a sowbug on her red anthurium, a racy flower with an exposed pistil. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Denise Welding, Amesbury, MA As Laurel made her way through the plaza, she couldn't help but notice the gorgeous co-anchor for the morning news show, out yet again signing autographs, smiling broadly, and infusing everyone around her with happiness, and she wondered, just for a second mind you, how good it would feel to punch her right in her stupid little face. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Nikkia Daniel, Marietta, GA "They clang to me like horse flies on cow dung," said angry, shivering onion farmer Jesper Lunk, whose clothes had been eaten off him by a plague of locusts except for his boxer shorts, which were a comfortable cool blend of rayon and nylon in a floral pattern with a three-button fly and a snug elastic waistband. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: James Macdonald, Vancouver, B.C. From my car I took thorough stock of the loose group of illegals standing around outside the Home Depot - plasterers, roofers, painters, all for hire … girls, too - and fingered the FEMA money in my pocket ruminatively; my house was a mess, but so was my love life - what was my pleasure? 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Jeff Eller, New Orleans, LA As Oedipus watched his mother gracefully glide across the great hall, he felt a stirring in his loins which he immediately regretted but then quickly dismissed, for he knew if these wanton desires for his mother were wrong then someone would have named the condition by now, thus proving once again that where his emotions were concerned there was only one description for Oedipus … complex. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Ted Begley, Lexington, KY Rosalita came in looking, with a look of surprise not unlike that of Hedy Lamarr in the 1947 version of "Samson and Delilah" when she learns that Samson will marry the woman, portrayed by Angela Lansbury, but with less fervor than that of Joan Crawford's 1948 version of "Mildred Pierce" discovering her daughter, played by Ann Blythe, was to run away with her, (Mildred's) boyfriend, to discover that Ernesto had once again left up the toilet seat. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: James Biggie, Melrose MA As Lieutenant Baker shrank his lips back to their normal size, he tried desperately to think of a situation in which his new-found power might be useful, as have I, your narrator. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Dan Blaufuss, Glenview, IL She had whispered wantonly, "Come to bed, Yul," but was now staring in utter disgust because the green lava lamp was too revealingly bright as he fumbled to adjust his new Merken, a $300 pubic toupee that had looked like a steal on eBay, but now looked just like a wet Tribble that had inexplicably crawled up his crack from an old "Star Trek" episode. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Barry Bozzone, Allentown, PA Her kiss grasped his lips like an aroused sea barnacle; her breath smelled like wet feet mated with ham - marinated, salty, delicious; and the sea wailed around them like lovers in a trailer park. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Matthew Brady, Seattle WA Peter shaded his eyes from the brilliant April morning sunlight as it suddenly illuminated the Bunny Trail, contemplated his handiwork, (separating all of those pearly white chicks-to-be from their mothers) and prepared for the final task to complete his mission - yes, this was a good day to dye. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Trent Bristol, Mandan, ND There were earthquakes in this land, terrible tsunamis that swirled flooding torrents of water throughout, and constant near-blizzard conditions, and not for the first time, Horatio Jones wished he did not live inside a snow globe. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Rich Buley-Neumar, Amityville, NY Grimly aware of the rapidly approaching disaster, Spiderman leaped from rooftop to flagpole, from flagpole to fire escape, hurling himself recklessly from building to building, darting glances through every window in his desperate search for one vital room, while silently cursing the fact that the last thing he had done before donning a one-piece skintight costume, was to eat a large bowl of hot chili. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: David J Button, South Australia, Australia They said that his writing was rich in metaphor … not the type of rich that one likens with the amassing of great wealth, but rather the richness that one might associate with a Pot Pourri pasta meal available at Spaghetti Factory, featuring a mix of Brown Butter and Mizithra Cheese, Meat, Clam, and Marinara sauces - yes, that's how rich his metaphors were! (for John Updike-RIP) 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: John Drew, Santa Clarita, CA Before she was Tabloid Sally, the impossibly foxy movie star who destroyed marriages like a busty ball-peen hammer, before she was Nobel Sally, the mercurial chemist who cured chronic halitosis, and before she was Pulitzer Sally, the honey-dipped scribe who brought Washington to its knees, she was just little Sally Barns from Crow's Neck, Neb., Bill and Margie's daughter, a doe-eyed pixie who loved fairy tales and onion rings. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Roger Collier, Ottawa, Ontario I awoke in my sleeper on the way from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, my nightmare riven by a train of thought that abruptly stopped me in my tracks with cataclysmic, explosive, and yet equal and opposing force, like a train on its way from Rotterdam to Amsterdam; then I realized I was on the wrong train and headed for Rotterdam, instead of Amsterdam. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Joe Dykes, Denver, CO The skydiver jumped out of the plane and felt his skin being pulled back like that of a dog sticking its head out of a car going 110 on the highway, owned by a driver rushing to be on time for work or else he would get fired by his boss with the curly mustache who owned a large speedboat. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: John Faherty, Queensbury, NY Swain had always come out of bar fights unscathed, built as he was like a '70 Dodge pickup (with that "Adventurer" styling package), but after tangling with Big Luther tonight, he felt like he'd been in a wreck, not a five-car pileup, exactly, but a pretty bad fender bender, busted headlights, maybe a bumper knocked loose, and, for sure, his tailgate dragging. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: John Hardi, Falls Church, VA It was a dark and stormy night, dark like the inside of a spare tire in the trunk of a 1957 Chevy sitting up on blocks in a tumbledown barn somewhere in rural Ohio, and stormy like the romance of Pete Kimball and his girlfriend Betty Lou, who used to make out in the back seat of that Chevy when it was new and shiny and the Dell-Vikings were singing "Come Go With Me"; but this is not their story, it just starts out dark and stormy like that. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: David G. La France, Burbank, CA Perry had come a long way in the nine years since being arrested by a park ranger in his '81 Firebird tenderly holding a spiral-cut, honey-glazed ham (with the bone removed). 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Jesse Kolman, Goodyear, AZ Crickets chirped in the lawn, katydids made that annoying grating sound in the trees, a mosquito whined near the ceiling, squirrels snuggled down in wherever it is they sleep, somewhere - probably Africa - a lion roared, ants gathered together in their underground tunnels like so many, well, whatever, and - in spite of the fact that it was night (dark and stormy) - Jimmy cracked corn and no one cared. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Dorinda Partsch, Chesterton, IN If she wasn't the poster girl for the word voluptuous, with her not exactly "bedroom," but definitely "walking-down-that-hallway" eyes, her hair a palomino mane rather than platinum blond, lips reminding me of Marilyn Monroe not Angelina Jolie, and that slow hip-swaying walk that sweet-talks a man's thoughts into dim, smoky rooms where R&B is played, she should've been. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Sandra Trentz, Yakima, WA Lady Rowena, fresh from her bath, knew she had time to be ready to meet the Prince at 6:00 o'clock even though the mantle clock was striking six, because the brass escapement lever mechanism that engages the teeth of the large gear which drives the smaller gears that send the hour and minute hands on their circular paths, was worn. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Frank J. Weidler, Placentia, CA On a lovely day during one of the finest Indian summers anyone could remember - a season the Germans call "old wives' summer," obviously never having had Native Americans to name things after, but plenty of old wives, and "Indian summer" in German would refer to the natives of India in any case, which would make even less sense than the current naming system - on such a day, however named, John Baxter fell in the creek and drowned. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Deanna Stewart, Heidelberg, Germany Fenwick was concerned when his voices returned, but they hadn't been troubling him much until now - now that they were singing an old tune by the Shirelles, or the Crystals, or the Ronettes, or the Angels, or the Chiffons, or one of those damn girl groups he couldn't keep straight, the uncertainty making him very agitated again, although he had to admit the harmonizing was quite good, really. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Jim Seamon, Punta Gorda, FL As my darling Jean-Claude entered the salon, with a single rose bud bouquet, I felt a wave wash over me, like the full brunt of Napoleon's forces at 9:05 am on the second of December 1805 ripping through once fertile fields to the Prutzen Heights, and I knew that Paris in printemps would be to my liking. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Andrew Pitt, Paris, France As always, that morning he awoke to the melodious sound of a stream of water cascading into a still pool, punctuated by several ominous silences - and he could judge, by the length of the silences and the volume of the cascade, just how much of his three-year-old son's urine he would have to wade through to get to the sink. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: David Pellicane, Highland Park, NJ Tinkerbell landed softly on the bedpost in a sparkle of Industrial Light & Magic, handed the packet of cigarettes to a rather stubbly "Pete" Pan and, seeing his little green tights strewn carelessly on the floor and a still sleeping Wendy lying naked beside him, quickly realized they were now a very long way from Never Never Land. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Hugh Trethowan, Bath, U.K. Harvey placed the muzzle of the .45 against his head, and as the cold steel touched his temple a sudden shiver raced along his spine, and the hair-trigger took on the frisson, his brains missing Marlene's photo, where he wanted it to go, and splattered across his burgundy nightgown, so he got the color combination right. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Edward Vincent Tennant, Cape Town, South Africa It could have been no more than midnight's icy incipit when Clifford, stumbling in hitherto sanguine emprise through the tombstone teeth of the raven lit Kirk-yard like some well-performed but lichen-hushed human bullet-catch, heard the manifest bactrian vociferation which betrayed with desperate flourish the inexplicably wretched fact that his camel was out there, out on the ice - and she was in mortal peril. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Mr. S. J. Crawford, Redlynch, QLD, Australia No man is an island, so they say, although the small crustaceans and the bird which sat impassively on Dirk Manhope's chest as he floated lazily in the pool would probably disagree. 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Glen Robins, Brighton, East Sussex, U.K. A dark and stormy night it was; in torrents fell the rain - except at occasional intervals, when, by a violent gust of wind was it checked, as up the streets it swept, (for in London it is that lies our scene), along the housetops rattling, and the scanty flame of the lamps fiercely agitating, that against the darkness, struggled. (The story of Paul Clifford, is Yoda, to a padawan telling) 2009 Dishonorable Mentions: Jay Clifton, Berkeley, CA 2008 Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city, their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N. J." Gordon Spik, Washington, D.C. Winning sentence, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest "Hmm …" thought Abigail as she gazed languidly from the veranda past the bright white patio to the cerulean sea beyond, where dolphins played and seagulls sang, where splashing surf sounded like the tintinnabulation of a thousand tiny bells, where great gray whales bellowed and the sunlight sparkled off the myriad of sequins on the flyfish's bow ties, "time to get my meds checked." Andrew Bowers Runner-Up, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Upon discovering that Miles Black, the famous phrenologist from Yorkshire was going to take up yodeling to lonely goats in Bali, James White decided to balance four planks of wood on a beer keg and call it an abstract work of art in the style of a famous fourteenth-century architect, just going to prove that people will read any old garbage if they think there will be a good pun at the end of it. Stefan Croker, Bury, Greater Manchester, UK Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Adventure Leopold looked up at the arrow piercing the skin of the dirigible with a sort of wondrous dismay - the wheezy shriek was just the sort of sound he always imagined a baby moose being beaten with a pair of accordions might make. Shannon Wedge, New Hampshire Winner, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest "Die, commie pigs!" grunted Sergeant "Rocky" Steele through his cigar stub as he machine-gunned the North Korean farm animals. Dave Ranson, Calgary, Alberta Runner-Up, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Children's Literature Joanne watched her fellow passengers - a wizened man reading about alchemy; an oversized bearded man-child; a haunted, bespectacled young man with a scar; and a gaggle of private school children who chatted ceaselessly about Latin and flying around the hockey pitch and the two-faced teacher who they thought was a witch - there was a story here, she decided. Tim Ellis, Haslemere, U.K. Winner, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Dorothy had reasons to be nervous: a young girl alone in a strange land, traveling with three weird, insecure males badly in need of psychiatric help; she tucked her feet under her skirt to keep the night's chill (and lewd stares) away and made sure one more time that the gun was secured in her yet-to-develop bosom. Domingo Pestano, Alto Prado, Caracas, Venezuela Runner-Up, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest I'm convinced that the Doc is dealing drugs to most of the mining crew because they either can't stay awake, constantly sneeze, grin like maniacs, or won't look you straight in the eye (not to mention behaving like a moron) and they wonder why a dwarf gets grumpy! 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Neil Prowd, Charnwood, ACT, Australia Detective Mike Hummer had been a private detective so long he could remember Preparation A, his hair reminded everyone of a rat who'd bitten into an electrical cord, but he could still run faster than greased owl snot when he was on a bad guy's trail, and they said his friskings were a lot like getting a vasectomy at Sears. Robert B. Robeson, Lincoln, Nebraska Winner, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The hardened detective glanced at his rookie partner and mused that who ever had coined the term "white as a sheet" had never envisioned a bed accessorized with a set of Hazelnut, 500-count Egyptian cotton linens from Ralph Lauren complimented by matching shams and a duvet cover nor the dismembered body of its current occupant. Russ Winter, Janesville, MN Runner-Up, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Fantasy Fiction "Toads of glory, slugs of joy," sang Groin the dwarf as he trotted jovially down the path before a great dragon ate him because the author knew that this story was a train wreck after he typed the first few words. Alex Hall, Greeley, CO Winner, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Historical Fiction As she watched the small form swing backwards and forth from the crystal chandelier - hands on hips, sniffing the air and squeaking inaudibly - it suddenly became clear to Madame de Pompomme that she had done the wrong thing asking Jacques to find and bring back her long-lost sister: for, whilst her coterie would doubtless be enchanted for a short while, the novelty of Janine having been raised by bats since the age of two in caves of the North-west Congo would soon wear off in seventeenth-century France. Simon Terry, Broadfield, Crawley, West Sussex, U.K. Winner, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Our tale takes place one century before the reign of Alboin, the Lombard king who would one day conquer most of Italy and who would end up being murdered by his own wife (quite rightfully, I'd say, since Alboin made a drinking cup out of her daddy's skull and forced her to drink from it), when our little Sonnebert was seven years old. Edo Steinberg, Beer-Sheva, Israel Runner-Up, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Purple Prose The mongrel dog began to lick her cheek voraciously with his sopping wet tongue, so wide and flat and soft, a miniature pink fleshy cape soaked through and oozing with liquid salivary gratitude; after all, she had rescued him from the clutches of Bernard, the curmudgeonly one-eyed dogcatcher, whose own tongue - she remembered vividly the tongues of all her lovers - was coarse and lethargic, like a slug in a sandpaper trenchcoat. Christopher Wey, Pittsburgh, PA Winner, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The complementary crepuscularities of earth and sky shrank away from one another as the roseate effulgence of a new dawn burst forth, not unlike a reclining pneumatic beauty's black silk stocking splitting apart at the seam to reveal the glowing radiance of an angrily sun-burned leg. Graham Thomas, St Albans, Hertfordshire, U.K. Runner-Up, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The pancake batter looked almost perfect, like the morning sun shining on the cream-colored bare shoulder of a gorgeous young blonde driving 30 miles over the speed limit down a rural Nebraska highway with the rental car's sunroof open, except it had a few lumps. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Jim Thomas, Gilbert, AZ Romance Bill swore the affair had ended, but Louise knew he was lying, after discovering Tupperware containers under the seat of his car, which were not the off-brand containers that she bought to save money, but authentic, burpable, lidded Tupperware; and she knew he would see that woman again, because unlike the flimsy, fake containers that should always be recycled responsibly, real Tupperware must be returned to its rightful owner. Jeanne Villa, Novato, CA Winner, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Like a mechanic who forgets to wipe his hands on a shop rag and then goes home, hugs his wife, and gets a grease stain on her favorite sweater - love touches you, and marks you forever. Beth Fand Incollingo, Haddon Heights, N.J. Runner-Up, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest He was a dark and stormy knight, and this excited Gwendolyn, but admittedly not as much as last night when he was Antonio Banderas in drag, or the night before that when he was a French Legionnaire who blindfolded her and fed her pommes frites from his kepi. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Leslie Muir, Atlanta, GA Carmen's romance with Broderick had thus far been like a train ride, not the kind that slowly leaves the station, builds momentum, and then races across the countryside at breathtaking speed, but rather the one that spends all day moving freight cars around at the local steel mill. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Bruce Portzer, Seattle, WA Science Fiction Timothy Hanson, Commander of the 43rd Space Regiment in the 52nd Battalion on board the USAOPAC (United Space Alliance Of Planets Attack Carrier) and second in command to Admiral L. R. Morris of the USAOP Space Command, awoke early for breakfast. Joe Schulman, Cartersville, GA Winner, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Lightning flashed from the blue-black sky of this alien world and shattered the engines of the spaceship, destroying Reninger's last chance of escaping and reminding him of the time his sister returned from New York with the tips of her hair dyed blue, except for the part about the lightning and the spaceship. Mark Murata, Kirkland, WA Runner-Up, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The dual-headed Zhiltoids from Beta Quadrant in the Crab Nebula, who lived entirely on a diet of steaming hot asphalt, thought they had died and gone to heaven upon landing in the Midtown Mall of Fresno, California on the planet Earth during the month they called "July". 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Gregory Homer, Sacramento CA Spy Fiction Special agent Mark Park's strong chin and firm mouth showed that he was a man to be reckoned with, while his twinkling blue eyes revealed surprising depths of kindness and humor, the scar on his cheek a past filled with violence and danger, and his left ear a fondness for M and Ms, but only the red ones. John R. Cooper, Portland, Oregon Winner, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The KGB agent known only as the Spider, milk solids oozing from his mouth and nose, surveyed the spreading wound in his abdomen caused by the crushing blow of the low but deadly hassock and begged of his attacker to explain why she gone to the trouble of feeding him tainted milk products before effecting his assassination with such an inferior object as this ottoman, only to hear in his dying moments an escaping Miss Muffet of the MI-5 whisper, "it is my whey." David Potter, Nagoya, Japan Runner-Up, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Vile Puns Vowing revenge on his English teacher for making him memorize Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality," Warren decided to pour sugar in her gas tank, but he inadvertently grabbed a sugar substitute so it was actually Splenda in the gas. Becky Mushko, Penhook, VA Winner, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The Jones family held their annual family reunion on Easter going through over six dozen spiral-cut, hickory-smoked hams and several bottles of a fine Australian shiraz, before Farmer Jones, the head of the family, took the leavings back to Manor Farm to slop Napoleon and his other champion hogs but the seventy-six ham bones fed the pig's tirade. Michael L. VanBlaricum, Santa Barbara, CA Runner-Up, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Jan Svenson, having changed his fortune in the annual "Scandinavian King of the Beach" in Santa Cruz with a bottle of black hair coloring and thus standing out in a sea of fair-haired rivals to win the coveted title, realized the ironic truth of the old adage "That in the kingdom of the blonde, the one dyed man is king." 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Matthew Chambers, Parsons, WV Dimwitted and flushed, Sgt. John Head was frustrated by his constipated attempts to arrest the so-called "Bathroom Burglar" until, while wiping his brow, he realized that each victim had been robbed in a men's room, thereby focusing his attention on the janitor, whose cleaning habits clearly established a commodus operandi. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Jay Dardenne, Baton Rouge, LA Nell Gwynn, a descendant of the famous English actress and friend of King Charles II, decided she would help French aristocrats, who were being decimated by the guillotine during the French Revolution, cross to safety in England by hiding them under her voluminous skirts and putting off French customs inspectors by confronting them with a face and arms covered with angry red pimples, earning for her the sobriquet of Scarlet Pimple Nell. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Alec Kitroeff, Psychico, Greece Western Nobody knew just who the steely-eyed stranger was, where he came from, where he was headed, or what his intentions were while he was in Dodge City; but he wasn't an hombre you'd want to stick your tongue out at or flip off, and any man who tried to tickle him would be asking for a long stay in a pine box, if you know what I mean. David McKenzie, Federal Way, WA Winner, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Bryson the Plainsman seldom spoke a discouraging word but he did when he filed for divorce after discovering his dear and an interloper played. Maree Lubran, Saratoga, CA Runner-Up, 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions Behind his pearly white smile lay a Bible black heart, not like the Psalms with its, "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord," but like Revelations where God just smites people. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Elaine Deans, San Jose, CA She had the kind of body that made a man want to have sex with her. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Barry J. Drucker, Bentonville, AR As Kevin thumbed through the thick pages of the ancient manuscript lately found deep in the bowels of the Enzo family library in Castellino, with its depictions and detailed woodcuts of the morbid crimes committed during the Spanish Inquisition, he couldn't help but marvel at the serene faces of the Florentine martyrs (Italians are so much tougher than they look!) and thought that his own expression would differ slightly if he were being sawn in half using the crack of his butt as a straight-line. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Camille Barigar and Jeff Blick, Twin Falls, ID There are certain people in the world who emanate an aura of well being - they radiate sunshine, light up a room, bring out the best in others, and fill your half empty glass to overflowing - yes it was these very people thought Karl, as he sharpened his mirror-finished guthook knife, who were top of his list. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Jason Garbett, London, U.K. Creeping slowly over the hill, the sun seemed to catch the small village nestled in the valley by surprise, which is a bit unusual really, as you'd think that something with a diameter of 865,000 miles and a surface temperature of 5780 degrees Kelvin, and which is more normally seen from 93,000,000 miles away, wouldn't be able to creep anywhere, let alone catch anything by surprise. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Malcolm Booth, Brinsworth, Rotherham, U.K. "Let's see what this baby can do, Virgil," said Wyatt, as he floored the Charger, brushing a Dart out of the way, sideswiping an oncoming Lancer, rear-ending a Diplomat, and demolishing a row of Rams before catapulting head-on into the sheriff's Viper - realizing that we'd indeed missed the turn-off to Abilene and ended up instead, in Dodge City. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Paul Curtis, Randburg, South Africa Though her beloved Roger had departed hours ago, Lila remained in their rumpled bed, daydreaming about his strong arms, soulful eyes, and how, when he first fell asleep, his snoring sounded not unlike two grizzly bears fighting over a picnic basket full of sandwiches, but as he drifted off into deeper slumber, his snoring became softer, perhaps as if the bears decided just to rock-paper-scissors for it instead. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Lili R. Lillie, Alamo, CA I hadn't fallen in love with Monique because of her intellectual level - she referred to the 6th grade as her "senior" year - or her habit of eating popcorn off the floor of theaters during movies - okay, so maybe love is a bad archer with a low IQ - but you couldn't carve a finer or shapelier figure out of a hedge. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Robert B. Robeson, Lincoln, Nebraska Emerging from the dark and dusty wine cellar of Lord Parker after a year of fattening up on wine, truffles, and caviar, head butler Hastings, sans his servility and his tan, was well larded and ready to slip into the Lord's slippers after pickling Parker in a punt of port. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Jay Solmonson, Orinda, CA The day started out as uneventfully as any other, and continued thus to midday and from there it was nothing at all to ease into an evening of numbing, undiluted monotony that survived unmarred by even the least act of momentary peculiarity - in fact, let's skip that day altogether and start with the day after. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Jon Starr, Rumford, ME As usual, Mr. Riddle came home from work, and, as usual, took the toy poodle, Fluffy, out for her walk, and, as usual, Fluffy "did her business" at the usual places, first at the bush, second, on the sidewalk, and third, in the grass, so that there, on the pavement, was evidence of Fluffy's evening sojourn: Mr. Riddle's little poodle's middle piddle puddle. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Dr. Ford Sutherland, Venice, Florida Watching Felicia walk into the bar was like watching two fat Rottweilers in yellow spandex and spike heels that had treed a scrawny bleach blond cat at the top of a skinny flagpole that for some reason had decided to sprout casaba melons. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Melissa Alliston, Coraopolis, PA Her name was Mauve, like the color of paint, which was apt: not only was she "pretty as a painting," she was also "smart as paint," and certainly as thin (assuming sufficient solvents had been added); she was, however, Arnold discovered when she stepped from the shower, a lot more fun to watch dry. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Steven W Alloway, Granada Hills, CA When he concentrated, his thick black eyebrows furrowed, looking not unlike a pair of Hypercompe scribonia caterpillars on a collision course over the bridge of his nose, but unlike them, his eyebrows would never evolve into giant leopard moths, and would find better places to hover after nightfall than around her 40-watt backporch light. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Jane Auerbach, Los Angeles CA Earthy ochre and russet hues in the lifeless leaves which rustle under his feet, and spiral down from the majestic trees above, signal that October has now arrived, but of course he knew this already because he has a calendar above his breakfast bar in the kitchen. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Roz Black, Rhynie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland As she skipped past the giant mushroom Alice was not surprised - because, after all, she had always suspected it was opium and not simply hookah, as many Lewis Carroll defenders had claimed, and tar heroin had since become a much cheaper and more available alternative - to see the track marks up and down the Caterpillar's abdomen. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Chris Carlos, City of Industry, CA Ted feared that the line between his jobs as plastic surgeon and butcher was blurring when he found himself injecting Botox into a rump roast he was preparing for his wife and mother-in-law, who was a decent person except for the hideous wart on her nose that begged to be removed - a simple task for his boning knife. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Wayne Carmichael, Tyler, TX The homicide detective was an aging woman with a crusty and somewhat ill-tempered personality, an individual who reminded me of the kind of woman my mother, a Sunday-school teacher, would have been if she had been a crusty and somewhat ill-tempered homicide detective. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Bill Crumpler, McKinney, TX Lonely as I might like to feel - the helplessness of loneliness, and its simulation, is so responsibility-relieving it fills me with relief of the sort we feel after using the urinal after a long funeral of an elderly relative we had never met - I write this, dear reader, because a writer talks to a word processor because he does not trust a real person. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Surit Das, BR, New Delhi, India Her lips were full and wanting in the kind of way that your tongue anticipates the happy burn of Hunan beef followed by the cooling swill of cheap beer, but never a malt liquor, as that would bruise the delicate tang of monosodium glutamate, the kind that only Sue Hong uses, that probably exacerbates her water retention, causing her lips to be unnaturally full and plump and always thirsty. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Larry Davick, San Francisco, California I heard her husky breathing as she came up the stairs, breathing exactly the way a sled dog breathes after competing in the Iditatrod as she sauntered into the room, her hips swiveling from side to side like a Sherman M-4 tank with a 75mm gun forcing its way through the hedgerows of Normandy after D-Day in 1944. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Bruce Hannem, Citrus Heights CA It was a dark and stormy night, except when the lightning flashed, because then it wasn't dark; it sort of turned the windows into a giant disco ball for a moment, but eventually the thunder and lightning stopped and it settled down to a steady light rain, so then it really was dark, but it would probably be a stretch to call it stormy. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Laura Loomis, Pittsburg, CA Tom and Kelly's relationship had hit a dead end, like that road in your neighborhood when you were little that everyone used to throw their old chairs away at, and then the kids would use them to build forts. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Diana Maloney, Northampton, MA Fittingly for a butcher, Carl resembled a fresh turkey - pale, knobby, and large through the middle with spindly appendages - and as he was wont to do on slow days, he had nearly finished reassembling the hams, loins, and chops into something approaching a pig when she walked in - long, flat, and lean, like a flank steak, radiating a heat that would cause him to flush, then darken, and, eventually, to crisp up deliciously. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: David K. Mullen, Batesville, IN Vito watched as Robert squirmed in his life vest while the Great White brushed against his chum-soaked and shackled body, but it wasn't until the terrible fish circled back, finally ending Robert's evening, that Vito, with the vision of the legless torso undulating up and down in the Farallon current had his epiphany, and uncovered one of life's truly great mysteries: when you shorten Robert you really do get bob. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Paul Olson, San Jose, CA Carey, unnerved by an affair that had suffered through weeks of volatility, walked unsteadily, her dress etching complex runes in the fine patina of dust along the antiquated floor, to a rose-scented box of love letters in a vain attempt to find solace, like a security fund struggling to find liquidity in the US sub-prime mortgage market. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Ray Pasimio, Chicago, Illinois As a cold winter sun was just rising above the lonely French village of Vicres-le-Buffeur, the forlorn figure of a man dressed in rich Arabian silks could be seen crouching in the center of the market square, crying softly and cradling in his arms the limp and lifeless body of what appeared to be a large hamster. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Arndt Pawelczik, Hennef, Germany The band had stopped almost two hours ago, the musicians had packed up their horns and strings and were halfway to Biloxi, but the lone couple on the dance floor moved to their own silent music as they clung to each other like barnacles on the rusty hull of an old oil tanker with a belly full of sweet crude hoping to drop their hook at the Big Easy before the dancing stopped. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: James Macdonald, Vancouver B.C. Like almost every other post-Hegelian neo-hipster angst monkey at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Rene flatly rejected the labels society placed upon him. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Bob Salsbury, Spokane Valley, WA It was common knowledge around town that Bill drank like a fish, the kind of fish that consumes large quantities of cheap scotch on a daily basis. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Brent Sheppard, Morganton, NC The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day - though the Little Leaguers themselves, who all attended Mudville's famed Albert Einstein School for Science and Technology, were certainly very, very smart. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Stephen A. Silver, San Francisco, CA The penguin stood on the iceberg, cutting a striking black-on-white profile, much like the silhouette produced by a person standing behind a screen in front of a bright light while holding up a Twinkie to represent the penguin and placing it atop a Yorkshire terrier to represent the iceberg. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Sarah Totton, Owen Sound, Ontario Although the family resemblance was almost palpable, there was no glint of recognition in the eyes of the separated-at-birth-but-nearly-identical quintuplets - Pixie, Trixie, Moxie, Gertie, and Howard - as they reached for the same size-10 champagne-colored lace Teddy in Filene's basement that fateful Thursday morning. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Julia Tryk, Shaker Heights, OH Sandy applied a fresh coat of lipstick, snapped her gum and pulled the specially-made thigh-high waders on for one last time before the New Year rang in; Anchorage didn't hold much for a girl from the Bronx, but Catherine the Great, in a snowdrift, had become her specialty. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Jane Louise Thalken, Shenandoah, IA The tiny boat got tossed around on the ocean like a pinball in a pinball game played by a player who was really good at hitting all of those bumper things to get a really high score. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Maile Valentine, Lakeland, FL Rudy's feline senses tingled as he watched Minerva pour a glass of milk, thrusting his tongue outward involuntarily, urging him to inexplicably lick his hand and smooth his cowlick, but he could not let Minerva know about the vampire kitten that had sucked his neck - attacking him with a feral ferocity that belied its adorable whiskered face - and how the meowing and purring that had become an integral part of their lovemaking was really just an injection of half-dead Calico. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Tara Lazar, Basking Ridge, NJ Town mayor Alvaredo Sanchez, in defense of Carmelita's indubitable honor, cracked the very expensive ocean-mist smoky-blue bottle of worm-in-bottom tequila over the badly balding head of his political opponent senior Montaya Gonzales, who runs the Toyota factory in town. 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Randy R. Wise, Paradise, TX Gripping his terrified victim by her sensual slender neck with his foul piercing talons like a lawnspiker, Igor the Terrible bellowed, "How do you want to die? over the coals? with a plastic bag over your head? with your blond hair seeped in red blood? in agony? today? tomorrow? - hurry up, please, my fingers are getting sore." 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Edward Vincent Tennant, Edgemead, Cape Town, South Africa Surveying his shattered and splintered ship, Baskin pronounced it wrecked, glanced at his first mate, Robbins, and began a careful assessment of his new surroundings: sand as white as whipped cream, lush greenery layered like a cake against the fruit-filled treeline, a vanilla sky blended into an evening as dark as chocolate with a pie-shaped moon, prompting him to wonder aloud, "what's so unappetizing about being stranded on a desserted island?" 2008 Dishonorable Mentions: Jay Dardenne, Baton Rouge, LA 2007 Gerald began - but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them "permanently" meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash - to pee. Jim Gleeson, Madison, WI Winning sentence, 2007 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The Barents sea heaved and churned like a tortured animal in pain, the howling wind tearing packets of icy green water from the shuddering crests of the waves, atomizing it into mist that was again laid flat by the growing fury of the storm as Kevin Tucker switched off the bedside light in his Tuba City, Arizona, single-wide trailer and by the time the phone woke him at 7:38, had pretty much blown itself out with no damage. Scott Palmer, Klamath Falls, OR Runner-Up, 2007 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest LaVerne was undeniably underdressed for this frigid weather; her black, rain-soaked tank top offered no protection and seemed to cling to her torso out of sheer rage, while her tie-dyed boa scarf hung lifeless around her neck like a giant, exhausted, pipe cleaner recently discarded after near-criminal overuse by an obviously sadistic (and rather flamboyant) plumber. Andrew Cavallari, Northfield, IL Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 2007 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Adventure As the hippo's jaws clamped on Henry's body he noted the four huge teeth badly in need of a clean, preferably with one of those electric sonic toothbrushes, and he reflected that his name would be immortalized by his unusual death, since hippo killings are not a daily occurrence, at least not in the high street of Chipping Sodbury. 2007 Winner: Tim Lafferty, Horsell, Woking, UK "This is no time for safety," Lance Steele thought to himself as he raced in hot pursuit of the evildoer through the cold night along the narrow road winding through the desolate twisting pass, the smell of burnt rubber rising from the macadam and the occasional spark bursting from the gravel heaved against the titanium guard rail, and he wished that he had remembered to turn the oven off, and that he were not on foot and wearing his new Florsheims. 2007 Runner-Up: P.C. Burchard, San Diego, CA Miss Cardinal mused over the singularly decadent manner in which Master Hammond consumed the steak and kidney pie and was reminded of the practices of certain cannibalistic tribes with whom she had lived during her travels in Borneo, not New Guinea, although New Guinea is certainly nice this time of year, despite the fact steak and kidney pie is rarely served there, at least not the kind made from sheep or cows. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Brad R. Frazer, Boise, ID Agent 53986262.9 was strapped precariously to a giant Chinese firework, the fuse slowly shortening like a noodle getting slurped into someone's pursed lips, and although he knew he was running out of time and still had no plan for escape, all he could think of was the song about the Muffin Man and how the word "polyurethane" made it sound like the material was made out of multiple urethras. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Allison Kelly, Great Falls, VA Children's Literature Danny, the little Grizzly cub, frolicked in the tall grass on this sunny Spring morning, his mother keeping a watchful eye as she chewed on a piece of a hiker they had encountered the day before. 2007 Winner: Dave McKenzie, Federal Way, WA Mary had a little lamb; its fleece was Polartec 200 (thanks to gene splicing, a diet of force-fed petrochemical supplements, and regular dips in an advanced surface fusion polymer), which had the fortunate side effect of rendering it inedible, unlike that other Mary's organic lamb which misbehaved at school and wound up in a lovely Moroccan stew with dried apricots and couscous. 2007 Runner-Up: Julie Jensen, Lodi, CA Out of a hole in the ground popped a bunny rabbit which had a long thick orange carrot between its teeth and a big splotch of mud on its back that had dried into a dirt clump the size of a tumor. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Veronica Perez, Palm Springs, FL Detective I'd been tailing this guy for over an hour while he tried every trick in the book to lose me: going down side streets, doubling back, suddenly veering into shop doorways, jumping out again, crossing the street, looking for somewhere to make the drop, and I was going to be there when he did it because his disguise as a postman didn't have me fooled for a minute. 2007 Winner: Bob Millar, Hasselby, Sweden She'd been strangled with a rosary - not a run-of-the-mill rosary like you might get at a Catholic bookstore where Hail Marys are two for a quarter and indulgences are included on the back flap of the May issue of "Nuns and Roses" magazine, but a fancy heirloom rosary with pearls, rubies, and a solid gold cross, a rosary with attitude, the kind of rosary that said, "Get your Jehovah's Witness butt off my front porch." 2007 Runner-Up: Mark Schweizer, Hopkinsville, KY What shocked Juliette as she entered the room was not that there was an escaped convict under her coverlet snuggling with her best teddy bear, but that there was a knife through his back, "And who," she wondered out loud, steadying herself against the faux-taffeta wallpaper, "would stab a teddy bear?" 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Katie Alender, Studio City, CA Fantasy Fiction Lady Guinevere heard it distinctly, a sharp slap, as if a gauntlet had been thrown, and yet it was hardly plausible that she, perched delicately on the back of her cantering steed, should be challenged to ride faster, since protocol determined that Arthur should ride in front, then she, then Lancelot, for that was the order prescribed by Merlin, ever since he invented the carousel. 2007 Winner: Celine Shinbutsu, Hino City, Tokyo, Japan Hiram had been a three-toed dragon, well on his way to a promotion to Imperial five-toed dragon, when he accidentally choked on the pink chiffon scarf of Princess Chloe's hat, and his coughing set the new oaken parapet, on the old stone bulwark, ablaze, thereby earning a demotion to Troll 3 - now his only responsibility was to keep billy goats off the bridge. 2007 Runner-Up: Michael L. VanBlaricum, Santa Barbara, CA At Elvenheim there was great joy, in that the legendary Ring of the Nordlings had been retrieved from the evil Sudlings by the hero Bill Baggydrawers, who it must be said looked nothing like a hero, at least none I've ever seen, and the Ring had once again been placed on the middle finger of the left hand of the Elvenking, who did rather resemble a king, even if his buck teeth made him look for all the world like a great rabbit. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Wayne McCoy, Gainesville Fl Historical Fiction Samson looked in the mirror and, when he saw what a fantastic haircut Delilah had given him, he went weak at the knees. 2007 Winner: Neil Prowd, Charnwood, ACT, Australia Purple Prose Professor Radzinsky wove his fingers together in a tweed-like fabric, pinched his lips together like a blowfish, and began his lecture on simile and metaphor, which are, like, similar to one another, except that similes are almost always preceded by the word "like" while metaphors are more like words that make you think of something else beside what you are describing. 2007 Winner: Wayne McCoy, Gainesville, FL The highway coiled up and around the mountain like a snake ready to strike because it was being harassed by one of those annoying guys on "Animal Planet." 2007 Runner-Up: Brent Sheppard, Morganton, NC Marilyn's main feature was her mountainous breasts, with an associated sharp ravine of cleavage - the breasts not awesome like Everest, but like one of the Highland peaks near Balquhidder, where the notorious outlaw Rob Roy spent his last days. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: John O'Byrne, Dublin, Ireland There was a numbing chill in the air - harsher than a localized anesthetic, far less jarring than your average epidural, but still effective at creating that tingly sensation which often precludes a general lack of feeling in one's extremities or sometimes leads to uncontrollable drooling if administered within the confines of a dentist's chair. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Randy Wilson, New Albany, IN The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife, not even a sharp knife, but a dull one from that set of cheap knives you received as a wedding gift in a faux wooden block; the one you told yourself you'd replace, but in the end, forgot about because your husband ran off with another man, that kind of knife. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Lisa Lindquist, Jackson, MI The inebriated sailor cast himself into the safe harbor of the diner, and once he had run aground in one of the orange Formica booths, without a nod of recognition or greeting brought the distracted waitress into the present by ordering in a voice both blustery and belligerent the vegetable soup, an unctuous amalgam of the kitchen's leftover odds and ends sunk in a sulfurous sea of brine. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Jack Mac'Kie, Naples, Florida The car headlights were pale - like a struck match viewed through a piece of smoked glass which you think you remember using to watch a solar eclipse around the time Alison and the children were still living here, which would have been the year before you got the job at the all-night bakery, twenty humid summers ago - because the alternator was faulty. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Richard Preddy, London, England His feelings for Lydia became a jumbled mess, like when the pen slips out of the hole on a Spirograph wheel, ruining the drawing you have been working on for hours, or possibly, the pen running out of ink during the process, snagging and tearing a hole in the 110# cover rated vellum of his heart. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Russell Wren, Amsterdam, The Netherlands She had curves that just wouldn't quit, like on one of those car commercials where a stunt driver slides a sexy new sports car around hairpin turn after hairpin turn while some poor musician, down on his luck and having been forced to sell out his dream of superstardom for a lousy 30-second ad jingle, sings "Zoom, zoom, zoom" in the background. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Amber Dubois, Denver, CO Her hair was the color of old copper, not green with white streaks like you see on roofs and statues where birds have been messing, but the kind you find on dark pennies from back in the nineteen-forties or fifties after God knows how many thumbs have been rubbing Abe Lincoln's beard. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Michael A. Cowell, Norwalk, CA Stanley frowned, his brow wrinkled like the furrows of a newly ploughed field in the far reaches of East Anglia, England's prairie, when the mighty Massey Ferguson has just completed its traverse of God's good soil in the heat haze of a late August afternoon, and wondered for the umpteenth time where on earth he had left his reading glasses. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Pamela Hibbert, Crowthorne, Berkshire, England The moon rose in the east, a thin, yellow sliver like a fingernail ripped off with a jagged edge that goes to the quick and hurts like the dickens, making Selena wince as she looked on from Dirk's strong embrace and, recalling the last time she clutched at something so hard she broke a nail, brooded as she remembered that tomorrow was her annual pap smear. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Kathleen Luisa, Falls Church, VA Karl awoke with a start, his heart pounding away like a drum, not a well mannered tympani such as one might hear in a Boston Pops rendition of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" but rather more like a snare drum in the hands of Terry Bozzio during the time when he was performing with Frank Zappa. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Christopher D Brunkhorst, Oxford, NJ Romance As her quivering lips met his, and her eyelashes fluttered softly on his sweating cheek, Dr Robbins reflected, "I didn't realize she had upper dentures … in fact, her slippery plastic palate reminds me of going down a waterslide that hasn't been properly chlorinated, as evidenced by the distinct nitrous and sulfurous emanations, or could it be sinus trouble?" 2007 Winner: Philip Bateman, Kenilworth, South Africa There was a pregnant pause - as pregnant as Judith had just told Darren she was (about seven and a half weeks along), which was why there was a pause in the first place. 2007 Runner-Up: Tracy Stapp, Santa Ana, CA She clung to the memory of their love like those tiny bits of used tissues he always left in his pockets, which mostly ended up in the dryer lint basket although enough of them welded themselves to her favorite navy blue, polar fleece pullover, rendering it as permanently flawed and unappealing as his name tattooed on her butt. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Pamela Patchet Hamilton, Beaconsfield, Quebec, Canada He held her desperately in his arms and stroked her silken hair, and as he drew her full red lips to his, he ravenously smothered her with lots of smooches. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Bill Kerschbaum, Ann Arbor, MI Ruthanne felt as though she was frozen in time, staring into Steve's eyes, deep turquoise pools of Tidy-Bowl blue, reflecting back the deep passionate love that Ruthanne felt in her heart because Steve certainly didn't feel anything, being in a coma as he was, so what Ruthanne had reflected back to herself was what she herself felt, bouncing off Steve's eyes, because there was absolutely zip going on behind those eyes. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Linda Morgan, Manassas, VA Science Fiction What a pity Dave was too young to have seen "2001: A Space Odyssey," for he might have been able to predict what would happen next, when the ape standing next to the big black slab picked up the tapir bone. 2007 Winner: Ann Medlock, Lenah Valley, TAS, Australia "So that was your Earth emotion 'love'," gasped Zyxwlyxgwr Noopar, third in line to the holo-throne of S-6, as he hosed down his trunk and removed the shallots. 2007 Runner-Up: Mike Bollen, Brighton, UK Racing through space at unimaginable speeds, Capt. Dimwell could only imagine how fast his spaceship was going. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Gary Smith, Florissant, CO Vile Puns I was in a back alley in Fiji, fighting desperately and silently for my life, fighting desperately for oxygen, clawing at the calm and almost gentle pressure of the fabric held over my face by implacable, ebony thighs when I realized - he was killing me softly with his sarong. 2007 Winner: Karl Scott, Brisbane, Australia The droppings of the migrating Canada geese just missed the outdoor revelers at the inaugural Asian math puzzle competition, marking the first time that dung flew over Sudoku Fest. 2007 Runner-Up: Kevin P. Craver, Lakewood, IL He was often found lurking behind the bakery, begging for scraps and practicing his rap, which is why he was known locally, as the synonym bum. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Ed Harrison, Lyman, ME Upon discovering that his chief executioner Dr. Szekely had been secretly releasing prisoners, Vlad the Impaler ordered him to be skewered on one of the good doctor's own fiendish spears, when suddenly, not recognizing the type of wood that was slowly advancing through the screaming victim, the nutty Romanian ruler quipped "What's up doc?" 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: David K. Lynch, Topanga, CA A rather youthful Billy Joel was fascinated when he entered the Green Room at the Tonight Show and saw a group of matronly nuns hastily applying hair color to the noggin of the show's next guest, Neil Young, whose agent offered an explanation from the corner of the room: "Only the good dye Young." 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Joe Wyatt, Amarillo, TX Determined to slip the leash, Everett reflected upon his folly, for he had followed the dusky Doberman of his desire into the kennel of lust, telling himself that here, at last, was the perfect pedigree for him, only to learn that she was a Bichon wheels. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Frank Kahren, Danville, CA Western The easy and comforting roll of the saddle was second nature to Luke, and as he gazed off into the distant setting sun, he wondered whether he had enough change for one more ride at the supermarket before he had to return to the home. 2007 Winner: Glenn Lawrie, Chungnam, South Korea Slim pulled the branding iron away from the yearling's seared flank and looked up to see Tuffy Edwards, the boss's daughter, trotting towards him on her sorrel mare, Brandi, wearing absolutely nothing but tight blue jeans and a green tank top - her gi-normous, heaving, unrestrained hooters resembling nothing so much as a pair of fat Charolais heifers trying to beat each other through a loading chute. 2007 Runner-Up: Syler Womack, Eustace, Texas Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions A par on the final hole would clinch the U.S. Open for the in-form Tiger Woods but, in truth, this mattered little to Herbert Cruddle as a gigantic wave swept him over the side of his floundering shrimp trawler. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Terry Drapes, Taipa, Macau Morty, a dedicated track and field athlete, was disqualified and charged with animal cruelty after giving Viagra to his 20-foot boa constrictor and using the snake to pole vault. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: JL Strickland, Valley, AL Nothing looked good on the two young celebrities, Scarlett Johansson and Kiera Knightly, as they posed on the cover of a fashion magazine, with their lips the color of a Big Ben Hybrid Teas Rose, and flawless complexions, but they could not compare to the one with Jennifer Lopez with her smoky gray diaphanous blouse, high heels, and a black leather belt that would leave a nasty red mark if she were to spank you with it. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Wayne Spivey, Huntsville, TX The stench would have been too much for most people to take, but Karl was used to it, having served as a Mess Specialist on board the "U.S.S. Constitution," an aircraft carrier that launched planes off its deck like so many maggots off a hot skillet. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Lupe Amezquita, San Jose, CA His hat fit his head as snugly as a manhole cover does the thing it fits into. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Steve McAllister, Austin, TX The small boat pitched violently upon the heaving bosom of the ocean, causing Johnson to reflect that, although he generally liked bosoms, he was getting really tired of the ocean's bosom, and wished that it would at least drop from a 44D to a 34B. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Mr. William J. Harvey, Midwest City, OK As master luthier Francesca turned the night-black ebony tuning pegs of her latest creation, a flamenco negra guitar with glowing palosanto back and sides, she thought about Vicente, his manly left hand soon caressing this same fretboard in an outpouring of mournful tarantas and siguiriyas, and at that very moment her g-string snapped. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Jim Holman, Gresham, OR Joshua was as dumb as a bunny and not at all like the egg-carrying one, more like the one who has never gone to middle school, or even the schools at either end. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Patrick Baker, Caledonia, Ontario, Canada The poetry teacher's bullet-riddled body lay sprawled on the verandah floor like a patient etherized upon a table. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Michael D. Bess, Nashville, TN There was only one thought in Kurt's mind as his trembling hand and timid fingertips edged closer to the neck of Annabelle's silk blouse, his heart pounding ever faster in syncopation with her panting breaths, gentle cries coming from her slightly-parted lips, her pleading eyes wide with a primitive emotion - if only he'd kept a tighter hold on that gerbil. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Jonathan Blay, Bedford, Nova Scotia, Canada Clark Kent, in his alter ego known as Superman, the Man of Steel, huddled deep into the doorway to escape the pelting spring shower, well knowing that wearing wet clothes for any length of time would give him surface rust, which he would have to remove by bathing in dilute phosphoric acid, and then sanding with 400-grit wet-and-dry sandpaper. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Roger Bond, Whittlesea, Victoria, Australia Allison sipped her tea as she thought about the Isabella Rosselini types - tiny, fragile, etiolated, willowy creatures of ethereal beauty whose delicate spaghetti-strapped sundresses seemed to hover about a quarter of an inch above their skin, while Alison's sundress cut into her flesh at the straps and bound at the waist or it ballooned out like the muumuu it really was. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Katy Brezger, Dowagiac.MI Hector had just met Sabina minutes before, and yet there they were, knees touching, faces just inches apart in the dimly-lit room, and her gazing deep into his eyes, which should not have been a surprise to either of them given that she was an ophthalmologist and he was a boxer whose left retina may have become detached the night before when "Mad Dog" Washington clocked him with a vicious right cross. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Ray Campbell, Redwood Shores, CA It was pleasant for Zandra to remember the beach at Cannes where she and Jean-Yves had lain, his pianist hands touching her in patterns of the Rachmaninov he'd played at Languedoc, to recall the scent of his lavendar mosquito repellant, his deep laugh when she'd said: "Tu es le premier homme pour jouer la musique classique sur mon estomac," and his reply: "C'est dommage, Zandra." 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Ellen Diamond, New York, NY Maurice slathered on the cherry colored lipstick continually, like some transvestite from a low-budget, 70's rock opera, and plotted his next escape attempt, as he watched carefully once again while the absent-minded guard turned the knob to his prison with such ease, and cursed his Creator for giving him a luscious, silver, hairy back, but no opposable thumbs. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Cale Dempster, North Las Vegas Miles Otterman thought he could get away with carving his initials on the old oak tree in the town square - and he just might have if Sheriff Mitchell hadn't recognized his MO. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Terry Drapes, Taipa, Macau If you think that the resemblance between the characters in this book and any person living or dead is only coincidental, you're just not trying hard enough. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Janina Eggensperger, Conway, AR "Send an ambulance; I'm glistening profusely … bosom heaving . . . luscious, ripe orbs threatening to burst the seams of my black lace bodice … pulse galloping apace like a knight's sleek steed … exquisite pain radiating down my graceful, alabaster arm, shooting upward to the finely chiseled jaw … I shall swoon - oh, my address?" the romance writer gasped into the phone before collapsing. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Linda A. Fields, Framingham, MA It was dark that night, dark as the hood of a black '77 Firebird and with the same glossy feel as rain had washed the Big Easy, but New Orleans did not seem any cleaner, just hot and sweaty like the back of a French Quarter stripper. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Marc "Zeke" Kossover, San Francisco, CA Everything about Randy proclaimed him to be a man's man, though neither in the sense of being the kind of man women are drawn to and men want to be nor in the homosexual sense, rather, in the sense of being a highly efficient and well-compensated valet. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Barbara Lauriat, Oxford, England Jake entered the small suburban bank, his face as cold and frozen as Theodore Roosevelt's on Mount Rushmore while at the same time his sweaty hands clenched and unclenched nervously in his pockets like one of those fast motion movies of flowers blooming and dying, to open a savings account. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Frank Leggett, Sydney, NSW, Australia As the budgies and parrots descended upon him, Rolf began to regret his decision to wear an outfit made entirely of cuttlebones; unfortunately, this was the first of many a fashion faux-pas resulting from Beatrice's none-so-sensible advice. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Ella Meumann, Lenah Valley, Tasmania Cooter - prone to deep cogitation when troubling bouts of constipation resulted in long-winded visits to the loo - reflected sentimentally on the oft underrated pork rind, envisioned its golden "pigmentation," its pleasingly rough exterior where marriage of deep fryer to fat-rendered skin hath borne progenies of crispy bubbles, deceptive in their parchment-skinned fragility - in reality a coordinated cacophony of crunch hitherto unmatched in the snack world. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Leslie Muir, Atlanta, GA It was a dark and stormy night, although according to meteorologists since the lightning density on the satellite imagery for the area was only about 0.5 strikes per square mile, it wasn't stormy, and according to members of the American Society of Cinematographers because the lights from the city reflected off the clouds and created about 13 lumens of light, it didn't really fit the technical definition of dark. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Steve Petermann, Plano, TX My tongue moistened my parched lips and my stomach started to churn as I hungrily admired Leslie's hair, which loosely resembled my great aunt Betty's daughter Cornelia's famous tuna casserole - brown, dry and crisp around the edges, yellow and creamy in the center with just a hint of grease spilling out over the top. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Paula Price, California, MO With "Bambi" eyes and an angelic face made for singing "The hills are alive" while traipsing across an Alpine meadow, Heidi Weissbrot seemed as pure as driven snow to older folks around Peach Blossom, but among boys her own age, there was a nasty rumor that her purity was more akin to snow driven to the river in dump trucks after being scraped from roads and parking lots. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Tom Rohde, Minneapolis, MN The crater of the volcano glowed red against the black sky, looking as if God had taken a drag of His cigar - if He smoked - which of course, He didn't. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Wendy Spoelstra, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada John lay in the morning dew next to his sleeping love as the pink hues of the sun rose over the rolling hills, illuminating a tender scene where for the first time satisfaction had come for a happy couple, who had fought all manner of obstacles to come to this one glorious moment, defiant in the face of Montana's repressive bestiality laws. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Dan Stuart, Burlington, VT "I love the library," Hilary said for no particular reason except to hear her own soft voice among the myriad of books which contained characters as familiar and recognizable to her as the neighborhood bum she passed everyday, who looked like Ted Danson when he dressed up as Dracula in Three Men and a Little Lady. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Jessamyn Sudhakaran, New Boston, OH When Marcel sank his dentures into the tarte frappee aux moules demi-tantalisees a la provencale to be suffused not with a pot-pourri of gilded remembrances of infancy, nor with vignettes of past hurly-burlies on the chaise longue, but with a bland melange of ephemeral insipidities of quotidian contemporaneity, "That takes the biscuit," he thought, "Madeleine's forgotten the salt, again." 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Graham Thomas, St Albans, Hertfordshire, England The Archbishop, imprisoned for ten years in various palaces where he was called "Traitor" instead of Christoph, returned home amid cheers of those who knew his happiness and stature soon would be cut short by the sword of the Black Knight, who was actually quite pale since sunlight doesn't penetrate armor, chain mail, and woolen underwear. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Mary Ann R. Unger, Ewing, NJ Dane worked the Spyrograph furiously, first red, then green, then red again, and finally blue; the pattern he sought was in there somewhere, and the correct combination would open the doors to a euphoria only known to dogs getting their stomachs scratched and parakeets viewing themselves in the mirror. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Matthew Warnock, Elgin, IL "I'll have a pack of cigarettes please, no, Marlboro 100's … lights please, in a box, yeah, no, wait, give me a soft pack, no, not those, the ones right above them, no, no, right next to those, yeah, wait, make it two packs, no wait, how much are they … no, one pack will do me, and a lighter please, no the other one, yeah, that one will be fine," he said quickly. 2007 Dishonorable Mentions: Shane Spears, Blytheville, AR 2006 Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean. Jim Guigli, Carmichael, CA Winning sentence, 2006 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest "I know what you're thinking, punk," hissed Wordy Harry to his new editor, "you're thinking, 'Did he use six superfluous adjectives or only five?' - and to tell the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement; but being as this is English, the most powerful language in the world, whose subtle nuances will blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel loquacious?' - well do you, punk?" Stuart Vasepuru, Edinburgh, Scotland Runner-Up, 2006 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Adventure Christy, lounging in the gondola which slipped smoothly through the enveloping mist had her first inkling that something was afoot as she heard pattering hooves below (for our story is not in Venice but Switzerland with its Provolone and Toblerone) and craning her not unlovely neck she narrowed her eyes at the dozen tiny reindeer, pelting madly down the goat trail. 2006 Winner: Irene Buttuls, Lytton, B.C She looked at her hands and saw the desiccated skin hanging in Shar-Pei wrinkles, confetti-like freckles, and those dry, dry cuticles - even her "Fatale Crimson" nail color had faded in the relentless sun to the color of old sirloin - and she vowed if she ever got out of the Sahara alive, she'd never buy polish on sale at Walgreen's again. 2006 Runner-Up: Christin Keck, Kent, OH It was a day, like any other day, in that Linus got up, faced the sunrise, used his inhaler, applied that special cream between his toes, wrote a quick note and put it in a bottle, and wished he'd been stranded on the island with something other than 40 cases each of inhalers, decorative bottles, and special toe cream. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Chris Harget, Campbell, CA The cold, cynical wind molested the auburn tresses of the fair damsel clinging to the steel of the rail trestle, from which vantage point she could see that it was a long way down to where she would land if she fell, which, given the velocity she would attain and the unfriendly pavement leering up at her, added to soft tissue's low tolerance for sudden impacts, would be a very bad thing. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Pat Hricko, Nicholson, PA Gripping his six-shot Colt Python with 8-inch barrel and Royal Blue finish, and tightening the straps on his Paratec Speed 2000 parachute, Jake leaped from the left aft hatchway of the tumbling, green-and-silver, twin-engined Embraer Lineage 1000, which had seating for nineteen passengers. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Johnathan Munroe, Halifax, NS Todd languished there, neck deep in the pumpkin-hued Amargosa Desert sand like a long forgotten cupcake in an Easy Bake Oven gone hellishly amok, and it finally made sense … "ooohhhh, DEATH Valley." 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Jeffrey Barnes, Atlanta, Georgia Children's Literature There was an old woman who lived in a shoe who had so much equity (because our story, dear children, is set in Miami's hot real estate market) that she upgraded the exterior to blue suede siding as a tribute to her idol, Elvis, moved her kids to a bootee out back, and then reopened the place as the "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" motel (but you'll have to wait until you're 18 to read any further). 2006 Winner: Barbara Bridges, Sierra Madre, CA Detective It was a dreary Monday in September when Constable Lightspeed came across the rotting corpse that resembled one of those zombies from Michael Jackson's "Thriller," except that it was lying down and not performing the electric slide. 2006 Winner: Derek Fisher, Ottawa, ON The victim said her attacker was nondescript - 5' 10 and 3/4", 163 pounds, with Clairol #83N hair (a hint of #84N at his temples) - and last seen wearing Acuvue2 contacts, a white Hanes 65/35% poly-cotton t-shirt with a 3mm round Grey Poupon stain on the neckband, Levi's 501s missing the second button, and Nike Crosstrainers with muddy aglets. 2006 Runner-Up: Linda Fields, Framingham, MA Nick Stiletto, a three-inch ash hanging from his generic P&Q-brand cigarette, squinted through the wispy smoke across the nicked linoleum-covered table at the man in the blue suit, wondering why he had gone into private detection when he could have easily inherited his father's cat-stretching business in Peoria. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Ed Buhrer, Louisa, VA Dawkins leaned against the building to avoid both the November wind and his prey and quietly congratulated himself for selecting his calf-length, double-breasted trench coat in a 60 cotton/40 poly left-hand twill weave with its wool felt collar, snug fitting belt with gun-metal fittings, reinforced buttons and inverted back pleat for repelling thugs and inclement weather. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Bill Raftery, Glen Rock, NJ "Christmas Eve fell upon the piazza, and the pealing, the tintinnabulous pealing, (perhaps not a pealing but an incessant tinkling, albeit an appealing incessant tinkling) of the street performers reached my ears, masking the shot, which would have rung out had not the tintinnabulations raised such an incessant tinkling that the sound died as dead as the musician who fell like Christmas Eve at my feet - his bell having been rung." 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Ben Ross, Lexington, NC Detective Otto Slugbert liked to compare himself to a legendary chess master, but his arch-enemy Bert Boswell often sneered that at best he resembled a merely average player of Mille Bornes® or Tri-Ominoes®. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Mary Hickey, Kirkersville, OH Fantasy Fiction It was within the great stony nostril of a statue of Landrick the Elfin Vicelord that Frodo's great uncle, Jasper Baggins, happened to stumble upon the enchanted Bag of Holding, not to be confused with the Hag of Bolding, who was quite fond of leeks, most especially in a savory Hobbit knuckle stew. 2006 Winner: Camille Barigar, Twin Falls, ID Historical Fiction While Hector and the heroes of Troy trembled behind the ramparts as cowboys below the walls raced up and down the beach, six-guns blazing and cries of "yee-hah!" filling the air, other cowboys across the sea were laboring gamely but in vain to throw a palisade around Wichita, Kansas, thereby adding veracity to the old homily of history that it is easier to cow a fortified city than to fortify a cow city. 2006 Winner: Christopher Backeberg, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa The McCain boys strode off proudly to fight in the Civil War, one for the Union and one for the Confederacy, neither of them giving a single thought to who would play them in the television movie of their story, which would be decided more than a hundred years later by 20-something casting agents who kept getting the Civil War and World War II mixed up. 2006 Runner-Up: Carmen Fought, Diamond Bar, CA When Debbie decided that Salt 'n' Pepper Beard was the most attractive pirate on the ship, she realized that choosing him was due to the advice of Sylvia, her new Life Coach, to be realistic about her own age and to open herself up to romance where it lay, unlike the troublesome past where she would have wished that only the younger pirates take advantage of her. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Jim Guigli, Carmichael, CA If Gilbert had known then what he knew now, he would have seen that the dilemma facing him - to do a good deed for the wrong reason or to do a bad deed for the right reason - had long ago been shown to be two sides of the same coin by the philosopher known as Theragora of Crete even though he was not from Crete at all, but from Malta, which of course was not called Malta when Theragora was there. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Hubert Kennedy, Concord, CA The king's men breathed heavily under their thick black hoods as they secured the wrists and ankles of prisoner William Tumey of Kent and as the rack's handle began to turn the ropes tightened and William's limbs were slowly stretched in opposite directions until his spine began to pop much like a bag of Redenbachers in a microwave and for something like the time it takes a hummingbird's wings to complete one cycle William smiled and euphorically languished in perfect lumbar alignment. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Daniel Kern, Boise, ID Purple Prose A single sparkling tear fell from Little Mary's cheek onto the sidewalk, then slid into the storm drain, there to join in its course the mighty waters of the Los Angeles River and, eventually, Long Beach Harbor, with its state-of-the-art container-freight processing facilities. 2006 Winner: Bill Mac Iver, Berkeley, CA Her angry accusations burned Clyde like that first bite of a double cheese pizza, when the toppings slide off and sear that small elevation of the oral mucosa, just behind the front teeth, known as the incisive papilla, which is linked to the discriminatory function of the taste buds except, where Clyde was concerned, when it came to women. 2006 Runner-Up: Pamela Patchet Hamilton, Beaconsfield, Quebec It had been a dark and stormy night, but as dawn began to light up the eastern sky, to the west the heavens suddenly cleared, unveiling a pale harvest moon that reposed gently atop the distant mesa like a pumpkin on a toilet with the lid down. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Gerald R. Johnson Vancouver, WA Lisa moved like a cat, not the kind of cat that moves with a slinky grace but more like the kind that always falls off the book shelf when he's washing himself and then gets all mad at you like it's your fault (which it wasn't although it probably was kind of mean to laugh at him like that), although on the bright side, she hardly ever attacked Ricky's toes in his sleep. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Debra Allen Wichita Falls, TX Words cannot describe the exquisite loveliness of the brilliant azure sky with its cerulean striations of periwinkle, cornflower, and cyan. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Mary Barberio Northville, MI As he saw his master approach, his tail wagged severely like an elderly lady fanning herself with a cardboard fan with a Bible verse on one side and a picture of Jesus on the other while singing hymn 567 from the Common Book of Hymns on an August afternoon revival in southern Indiana. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Ron Bird, Lakehills, TX He rose quickly when she entered, not like the flag being raised at the American Legion in a jerky fashion, but more like the light red Creme Soda in the straw of a teenage girl or boy on the back porch of his mobile home late in the evening. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Ron Bird, Lakehills, TX As I watched the sun rise through the wisps of smog like an angry Scandinavian sumo wrestler clad in a gold lame muumuu, riding an arthritically slow escalator through the smoke of his own cheap panatela to the linens and beddings floor at J C Penneys, I realized that upon the orb's overtopping the horizon, simple geophysics would deal that metaphor a quick and far less painful death than it deserved. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Dennis Grace, Austin, Texas The nervous and untried exotic dancer seemed to cling protectively to her brass pole like the edge of a roll of plastic wrap when you are looking for the beginning of the roll and it seems like it's healed up or melted into the rest of the wrap until finally you just give up and use foil or wax paper instead. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Dwight Jenkins, Sun City, CA The steam rose off his sweaty red flannel shirt like cotton candy on a cardboard cone, if cotton candy were transparent in a misty sort of way and didn't actually stick to its cone, but instead rose upwards something like steam rising off a sweaty flannel shirt in the twilight of an early winter Vermont afternoon. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: T. Edward Lavoie, Essex Junction VT The widow Hasha Brown, whose agrarian husband had died from an unfortunate accident involving a hoe, leaned on the filigree railing of her balcony, overlooking her lavish, ornate Idaho estate, her dewy breasts protruding from her Pucci-print dressing gown like subterranean tubers saturated and distended from the vernal rains. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Jennifer G. Liggett, Stow, OH David loved Marisela's voice, which was like fresh honeydew melon wrapped in fine prosciutto, and pierced with a round, teal gourmet toothpick, set on a Lenox Fruits of Life serving plate upon a mahogany table in a brilliantly sunlit (albeit in need of redecorating) dining room, but he wasn't very fond of anything she said. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Stephen V. Masse, Medford, MA The sun, which much resembled the yolk of a sunny-side up egg, set over the slight hill like a cheerio falling off the back of a spoon when a spoon is upside-down on a table and a cheerio is set on top of it. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Katrina Medoff, Wilmington, DE When he heard the woman upstairs scream, the Maytag man's heart thumped in his chest like an off-balance washer full of heavy bath towels. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Linda Shakespeare, Elk Grove, CA Gray hung over the morning like a gauze bandage, the kind you wrap loosely over an oozing wound to keep it covered but still let air in, but the eastern sky reddened slowly, like the first signs of blood poisoning moving up an arm. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Russ Winter, Janesville, MN Romance Despite the vast differences it their ages, ethnicity, and religious upbringing, the sexual chemistry between Roberto and Heather was the most amazing he had ever experienced; and for the entirety of the Labor Day weekend they had sex like monkeys on espresso, not those monkeys in the zoo that fling their feces at you, but more like the monkeys in the wild that have those giant red butts, and access to an espresso machine. 2006 Winner: Dennis Barry, Dothan, AL Sex with Rachel after she turned fifty was like driving the last-place team on the last day of the Iditarod Dog Sled Race, the point no longer the ride but the finish, the difficulty not the speed but keeping all the parts moving in the right direction, not to mention all that irritating barking. 2006 Runner-Up: Dan Winters, Los Altos Hills, CA Our story begins with Raul, gently stroking Priscilla's raven hair, gazing into her coal-dark eyes, eyes that reminded him of the blackness of the inside of a size 11½ D shoebox, which in turn reminded him he needed to get his Bass Weejuns re-soled before that job interview next week with the owner of the janitorial service. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Gordon Bassham, Andover, KS Ramon kissed Juanita hard and fast, his tongue probing her mouth like an urologist's finger searching for a lone polyp on an engorged prostate gland, which reminded Ramon that he needed to get a colonic irrigation to make next week's annual physical more pleasant for both him and his doctor. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Ted Begley, Lexington KY Sylvia leaned seductively back in her chair and downed the shot of cheap gin that Brad had poured for her, and speculated once again that, even if it did taste like something you'd rub on a horse, it had the pleasant side effect of softening Brad's facial symmetry which had always reminded her of the collapsed, pocked surface of a cheese quiche that's been cooked at too high a temperature. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Janna Harris, Littlerock, CA He loved her like no other, their romance developing quickly, like the rapid growth of farm swine which grow from 2 to 4 pounds daily until they're fully grown and put to market for slaughter, or like the rapidly growing cells that produce moose antlers until they fall off in early spring, and suddenly Bill sensed the imminent doom of his romance lying in wait. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Jeremy Perreaux, Sarnia, Ontario Like a baleen whale inhaling krill - a collection of small marine crustaceans of the order Euphausiacea - or an anteater sucking up Formicidae - characteristically having wings only in the males and fertile females and living in colonies that have a complex social organization - her lips sought out mine in a passionate kiss. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Michael J. Sheehan, Cedar, MI Science Fiction "Send a message back to Command Central on Earth and ask for their advice, which we will be able receive immediately even at this great distance, thanks to the ingenious manipulation of coherent radiation through a Bose-Einstein condensate and the bizarre influence of the Aspect effect, which enables us to impart identical properties to remotely separated photons," Captain Buzz told the feathered Vjorkog at the comms desk, "and tell them our life-pod is going to explode in eight seconds." 2006 Winner: Christopher Backeberg, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa It was just another day at the office aboard "StarCruise" until David spotted a tiny speck in his passenger window, approaching from the direction of the Masai Nebula and making a right angle with bisector of the isosceles formed if you joined Bendy's Star, Planet Anet, and White Hole 14437-5A, but sighed peacefully as it turned out to be the reflection of the fluorescent light swinging loose above Captain Mudlove's head. 2006 Runner-Up: Talha bin Hamid, Karachi, Pakistan Scarcely three months after he had promised Purity that he would stand by her no matter what, and a bare two hours after he had witnessed he unorthodox birth of her pointy-eared alien child, George somewhat dazedly approached the information desk at the public library and sent the matronly attendant into paroxysms of mirth by asking for a baby care book by Mr. Spock. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Lionel Monash Hurst Vile Puns As Johann looked out across the verdant Iowa River valley, and beyond to the low hills capped by the massive refrigerator manufacturing plant, he reminisced on the history of the great enterprise from its early days, when he and three other young men, all of differing backgrounds, had only their dream of bringing refrigeration to America's heartland to sustain them, to the present day, where they had become the Midwest's foremost group of refrigerator magnates. 2006 Winner: Dick Davis, Circle Pines, MN Herr Professor Doktor Weiss' reputation was made when he conclusively proved the fraudulency of the Mayan codex that claimed to show that that ancient people knew the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter to an exactitude unknown until modern times, in his article, "Bye, Bye, Mesoamerican Pi." 2006 Runner-Up: John L. Drost, Barboursville, WV Cheralynn posed before the unblinking mirror, panting weakly, as her private surgeon hovered around her, tightening the straps on her custom-made girdle, and it dawned on her for the first time in her pampered, overindulged 49 years, that it was only a matter of time before she would succumb to Furniture Disease, and her chest would fall into her drawers. 2006 Dishonorable Mentions: Tracey MacDonald, Antigonish NS Western His mistake, Shut-eye McBlamaway reflected, was not in standing up to a gang of desperadoes and rustlers on the high country, but in standing up to a gang of desperadoes and rustlers who had just left the set of a Sergio Leone shoot, and were thus equipped with those guns that never run out of ammunition. 2006 Winner: Samuel Goldstein, Los Angeles, CA Butch glared balefully across the saloon at Tex, who had been stone dead since the scorpion he had unwittingly sat on had bitten him on the butt some half an hour or so ago, little suspecting that this was going to be his toughest staring contest since the one against old Glass-eyed Juan, during the great sand-storm of '42, at the height of the Arizona conjunctivitis epidemic. 2006 Runner-Up: Geoff Blackwell, Bundaberg QLD Australia Special Salute to Breasts Category As she sashayed out of the police station, her high heels clicking a staccato rhythm on the hard tile floor, like a one-armed castanet player in a very bad mariachi band, her ample bosom held in check only by a diaphanous blouse, and bouncing at each step like a 1959 tricked out Low-rider Chevy with very good hydraulics - she smiled to herself as she thought of the titillating interrogation from Detective Tipple about the Twin Peaks Melon Heist. 2006 Entry: Wayne Spivey, Major, USAF Retired, Huntsville, Texas When she sashayed across the room, her breasts swayed like two house trailers passing on a windy bridge. 2006 Entry: Stan Higley, Fairport, NY Although Brandi had been named Valedictorian and the outfit for her speech carefully chosen to prove that beauty and brains could indeed mix, she suddenly regretted her choice of attire, her rain-soaked T-shirt now valiantly engaging in the titanic struggle between the tensile strength of cotton and Newton's first law of motion. 2006 Entry: Mark Schweizer, Hopkinsville, KY Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions Getting the performance rating of highly successful, although clearly nothing to be ashamed of, left Blevins somewhat oddly dissatisfied, like when you realize, upon having the triage nurses greet your ambulance, that your underwear, as far as you can determine, is in pretty decent condition, but you'll, nonetheless, never pull through the surgery. 2006 Entry: Jim Lubell, Mechanicsville, Maryland The goose waddled slowly, heavily, across the road, exactly the way my mother-in-law would if she were a goose. 2006 Entry: Mary Montiel, Wichita, KS Kathy, who had bound her breasts and cropped her hair, and lied about her gender to join a monastery of Jesuits in northern Kentucky, until she was discovered one night in the shower, winced as the dentist pulled her tooth. 2006 Entry: Terry Johnson, Tularosa, NM A Lodgepole Pine grew straight and tall in front of his cabin, sort of like a lodgepole, only with branches. 2006 Entry: Stephen E. Moore, Edmonds, WA As diaphanous curlicues of tobacco smoke tumbled gracefully in the honky-tonk air - like double-jointed gymnasts from the spirit world - Buck was reminded of his lifelong dream of becoming a brilliant veterinary surgeon, a dream he'd vacuum-packed to his heart since watching a crime show about a rash of unsolved tail dockings on the Isle of Man. 2006 Entry: Leslie Muir, Atlanta, GA Withdrawing his hand from her knee, the English professor stormed, "Ending a sentence with a preposition is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put," although she had merely looked at his hand and asked, "What are you doing that for?" in a sentence intended to end the proposition. 2006 Entry: Carl C. Partlow, Rancho Cucamonga, CA Frank took one look at Tina's moderately shapely legs, her adequate waist, her decent bosom, and her not-unattractive face, and said to himself "Well, hello Miss You'll-Do-Until-Something-Better-Comes-Along!" 2006 Entry: Lawrence Person, Austin, TX Yet again Imelda was exacerbated, or at least she assumed she was, as she was never sure exactly what the term meant though when she felt bloated and crampy as she was now, she was pretty sure she was, exacerbated that is. 2006 Entry: Matt Fidiam, Soquel, CA Twas brillig, and the toves were not just slithy, they were stinking drunk. 2006 Entry: Richard A. Polunsky, Houston TX "Please Jeffrey, don't tell him this time" a beautiful woman, with eyes like cobalt fire, implored of me as she staggered obviously a bit tipsy, if not completely obliterated, out of the Wagon Wheel Tavern and onto West Fourth Street and blinking twice from the afternoon sun managed to slink past me and into the arms of a fellow who I'm guessing was Jeffrey. 2006 Entry: Robert Salsbury, Spokane Valley, WA Ah, yes, it was a beautiful face with skin smoother than pumice and breath fresher than a twenty-five-day-old tuna sandwich stored for safe keeping in a Wichita schoolgirl's lunchbox, and I found myself beset, nay, overcome, with twin urges: to ravish her there and then on the cash register, or to slough off the skin of my calloused feet on the stubble of her chin. 2006 Entry: Cathy Bannister, Kaleen, Canberra, Australia Houses dotted the landscape in the small village where Hans lived … somewhat resembling a Monet painting … although he wasn't really the father of pointillism … but since it did directly offshoot FROM impressionism, it would still be appropriate; plus, the fact his name was Hans, made it seem all the more in keeping with the overall theme. 2006 Entry: Mariann Simms, Wetumpka, AL The day was like any other, except that this was a Wednesday so it was really only like 1/7th of the other days. 2006 Entry: Randy Wilson, New Albany, IN Her romance ended, not a quick separation but like the gradually fading white dot on one of those old black-and-white vacuum tube TVs when it's turned off; and she was glad, because she felt uneasy in his arms and required as many adjustments to the "horizontal hold" and "vertical hold" as when she would stay up late watching scary shows like "Twilight Zone" and "Outer Limits" long ago. 2006 Entry: Charles Wells, Albuquereque, NM Her moans and sighs stoked the fire of his libido more, engineers to the red-hot locomotive of his lust. 2006 Entry: Caedman Oakley, Auckland, New Zealand Maybe it was because he was feeling dizzy after the four litres of creme de menthe he'd drunk, or perhaps it was because the day had started with his slippers exploding completely unexpectedly as he ate his cornflakes, but, as Anthony looked behind him for the fortieth time, walking home from the bar, he could have sworn he was being followed by a large silver-backed gorilla. 2006 Entry: Terre Yuki, London Gripping the handle of the knife carefully, Vanessa made a nervous incision in the body on the table, wondering vaguely if she was anywhere near the heart as the surgeon, her work-experience supervisor, flicked vaguely through the latest "Who magazine" that was placed over the head of the patient, and in taking a deep drag of her filtered 16-milligram noticed that, if the Oscars were anything to go by, orange was back in again. 2006 Entry: Beth Worrall, Australia I saw her from across the room and knew I had to meet her, not because of her ample bosom, or her full lips, or her beautiful creamy skin, or the way her hair was twisted into a nice tight bun, or the buttoned-up blouse that begged to be torn off her body, or the skirt that was perhaps a size too small, but because she was my kid's teacher and I was here for the parent-teacher conference. 2006 Entry: Lori Yates, Kezier, OR Her eyelashes fluttered like the windshield wipers of an eighteen-wheeler on the Ohio Turnpike when the weary-eyed driver is trying to have at least some vision in a heavy August rainstorm that is like an Appaloosa urinating on solid asphalt. 2006 Entry: Paul Bailie, Chicago, IL Hardly a day passed without poor Matilda looking back on her life and ruing that fateful day she decided that to cut her toenails with her father's scythe to make up that extra four minutes she had wasted listening to "Muskrat Love" by the Captain & Tennille. 2006 Entry: Stephen Farnsworth, Manchester, England "Grasshopper, the three secrets of life are as follows: first, keep your eyes and ears open; second: don't tell everything you know." 2006 Entry: Andy Otes, Frenchs Forest NSW, Australia 2005 As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual. Dan McKay, Fargo, ND Winning sentence, 2005 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest When Detective Riggs was called to investigate the theft of a trainload of Native American fish broth concentrate bound for market, he solved the case almost immediately, being that the trail of clues led straight to the trainmaster, who had both the locomotive and the Hopi tuna tea. Mitsy Rae, Danbury, NE Runner-Up, 2005 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest India, which hangs like a wet washcloth from the towel rack of Asia, presented itself to Tex as he landed in Delhi (or was it Bombay?), as if it mattered because Tex finally had an idea to make his mark and fortune and that idea was a chain of steak houses to serve the millions and he wondered, as he deplaned down the steep, shiny, steel steps, why no one had thought of it before. Ken Aclin, Shreveport, LA Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 2005 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Children's Literature The woods were all a-twitter with rumors that the Seven Dwarves were planning a live reunion after their attempted solo careers had dismally sputtered into Z-list oblivion and it was all just a matter of meeting a ten-page list of outlandish demands (including 700-threadcount Egyptian cotton bedsheets, lots of white lilies and a separate trailer for the magic talking mirror) to get the Princess Formerly Known As Snow White on board. 2005 Winner: Shelby Leung, Dulwich Hill, NSW, Australia When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday, his children packed his bags and drove him to Golden Pastures retirement complex just off Interstate 95. 2005 Runner-Up: Stephen Farnsworth, Manchester, U.K. Because of her mysterious ways I was fascinated with Dorothy and I wondered if she would ever consider having a relationship with a lion, but I have to admit that most of my attention was directed at her little dog Toto because, after all, he was a source of meat protein and I had had enough of those damn flying monkeys. 2005 Dishonorable Mentions: Randy Blanton, Murfreesboro, TN The children of Hamelin were led away by a pied piper (it's common knowledge) to parts unknown; whither they went is now herein revealed, however the precise location is cloaked in accordance with International Fantasy Regulation IFR.02.3a governing site specifics as, for example, in any Harry Potter story the locations are indeed identified, but just you try and find them. 2005 Dishonorable Mentions: P.S.Hamilton, Pearland, TX "What are you doing in my bedroom at this time of night, Ernie, and why are you grinning at me with those sharp teeth and how come you've been spending so much time with the Count lately, and why has Big Bird disappeared, and you should really do something about that breath, or my name isn't Bert the muppet." 2005 Dishonorable Mentions: Vicki Nunn, Gladstone, Queensland, Australia Dark and Stormy Night It was a dark and stormy night, although technically it wasn't black or anything -- more of a gravy color like the spine of the 1969 Scribner's Sons edition of "A Farewell to Arms," and, truth be told, the storm didn't sound any more fierce than the opening to Leon Russell's 1975 classic, "Back to the Island." 2005 Winner: Kevin Hogg, Cranbrook, BC, Canada Detective Patricia wrote out the phrase 'It was a dark and stormy night' exactly seventy-two times, which was the same number of times she stabbed her now quickly-rotting husband, and the same number of pages she ripped out of 'He's Just Not That Into You' by Greg Behrendt to scatter around the room -- not because she was obsessive compulsive, or had any sentimental attachment to the number seventy-two, but because she'd always wanted to give those quacks at CSI a hard time. 2005 Winner: Kari A. Stiller, College Station, TX Historical Fiction Sphincter, the gladiator, girded his loins in preparation for today's games, glad to be part of the season opener since he hadn't been sure until yesterday that his contract would be renewed, given his slump during the Germans-versus-lions series but he knew that swatting Germans into the lion's pit was trickier than it looked and he told the officials that they should look at his other stats, not just Huns batted in. 2005 Winner: Robert Peltzer, Baltimore, MD A column of five hundred Roman foot soldiers - a column held together by the plaster of courage -- advanced on a teeming sea of rebellious slaves -- slaves who had, ironically, built most of Rome's columns, although they actually used lime and not plaster to cement the structures, and though it is perhaps more historically precise to describe the soldiers' column as bound by the lime of courage, that doesn't really have the same adventurous ring to it. 2005 Runner-Up: Mark Hawthorne, Rohnert Park, CA "Wet leaves stuck to the spinning wagon wheels like feathers to a freshly tarred heretic, reminding those who watched them of the endless movement of the leafy earth-or so they would have, if only those fifteenth-century onlookers had believed that the earth actually rotated, which they didn't, which is why it was heretical to say that it did-and which is the reason why the wagon held a freshly tarred heretic in the first place." 2005 Dishonorable Mention: Alf Seegert, Salt Lake City, UT Romance Billy Bob gushed like a broken water main about his new love: "She's got long, beautiful, drain-clogging hair, more curves than an under-the-sink water trap, and she moves with the ease of a motorized toilet snake through a four-inch sewer line, but what she sees in me, a simple plumber, I'll never know." 2005 Winner: Glenn Lawrie, Chung-buk, South Korea "Oh my God!" Amber whispered as the compressor throbbed to life, shuddered rhythmically towards its inevitable conclusion, and shot ninety pounds of sultry air through custom-bored, cold-drawn, boss-lock-fitted crimp-couplings as Chuck Key glanced up with a smile that only tire shop guys can smile. 2005 Runner-Up: Jere Hudson, Ashland, OR Sandra had waited and wished for Gary to come sweep her off her feet, feeling just like Lois Lane waiting for her handsome, masculine Superman to come fly her away from the humdrum of everyday life, but Gary had never come, and so she'd ended up with Herman, a man as bald as Lex Luthor with worse eyesight than Clark Kent and the maturity level of Jimmy Olsen. 2005 Dishonorable Mentions: Mary P. Potts, Bradenton, FL Looking sideways at Thomas, Mireille slowly removed her scarf, waiting . . . hoping . . . praying that when he came close enough to smell the delectable fragrance of her long, luscious waves that he wasn't going to start sneezing or sniffling or rubbing his eyes, because those were tell-tale signs of his allergies acting up, and if they did, he would know that she had been out rolling around in the lavender fields with Luc again. 2005 Dishonorable Mentions: Keriann Noble, Murray, UT Garwood dearly loved his time spent in the goat-house, where he could court Thordia-- regaling her with his prowess at treating goat-udder growths, shoveling manure like a nuclear chemist trying to bottle the Christmas spirit, and making the precious fermented limburger of the lactate goat secretions. 2005 Dishonorable Mentions: Brendan Wright, Portland, OR Spy The double agent looked up from his lunch of Mahi-Mahi and couscous and realized that he must escape from Walla Walla to Bora Bora to come face-to-face with his arch enemy by taking out his 30-30 and shooting off his nemesis' ear-to-ear grin so he could wave bye-bye to this duplicitous life, but the chances of him pulling this off were only so-so, much less than 50-50. 2005 Winner: Charles Jaworski, North Pole, AK Vile Puns Falcon was her name and she was quite the bird of prey, sashaying past her adolescent admirers from one anchor store to another, past the kiosks where earrings longed to lie upon her lobes and sunglasses hoped to nestle on her nose, seemingly the beginning of a beautiful friendship with whomsoever caught the eye of the mall tease, Falcon. 2005 Winner: Jay Dardenne, Baton Rouge, LA Max thought the night-time burglary at the California surfing museum would be a safe caper, but that was before he spotted the security cop riding a bull mastiff, blond hair blowing in the wind, and noticed the blue-and-white sign wired to the cyclone fence, "Guard dude on doggy." 2005 Runner-Up: Jim Dehn, Clovis, CA 2004 She resolved to end the love affair with Ramon tonight . . . summarily, like Martha Stewart ripping the sand vein out of a shrimp's tail . . . though the term "love affair" now struck her as a ridiculous euphemism . . . not unlike "sand vein," which is after all an intestine, not a vein . . . and that tarry substance inside certainly isn't sand . . . and that brought her back to Ramon. Dave Zobel, Manhattan Beach, CA Winning sentence, 2004 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The notion that they would no longer be a couple dashed Helen's hopes and scrambled her thoughts not unlike the time her sleeve caught the edge of the open egg carton and the contents hit the floor like fragile things hitting cold tiles, more pitiable because they were the expensive organic brown eggs from free-range chickens, and one of them clearly had double yolks entwined in one sac just the way Helen and Richard used to be. Pamela Patchet Hamilton, Beaconsfield, Quebec, Canada Runner-Up, 2004 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest She sipped her latte gracefully, unaware of the milk foam droplets building on her mustache, which was not the peachy-fine baby fuzz that Nordic girls might have, but a really dense, dark, hirsute lip-lining row of fur common to southern Mediterranean ladies nearing menopause, and winked at the obviously charmed Spaniard at the next table. Jeanne Villa, Novato, CA Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 2004 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Children's Literature Jack planted the magic beans and in one night a giant beanstalk grew all the way from the earth up to the clouds--which sounds like a lie, but it can be done with genetic engineering, and although a few people are against eating gene-engineered foods like those beans it's a high-paying career to think about for when you grow up. 2004 Winner: Frances Grimble, San Francisco, CA When Cinderella saw that the Prince had sent the Duke to find the woman of his dreams, like some rich schoolboy who pays the smartest kid in the class to do his homework, or worse, like someone who has been on welfare so long that he has trouble doing any kind of work, she suddenly realized the spoiled nature of the King's son and stealthily slid the slipper back into her pocket. 2004 Runner-Up: Milton Combs, Kingston, WA As he entered the room within which so many a wild night of their sweltering love affair had been spent, the White Rabbit regarded her with benevolent eyes, her posture such that he suspected something was wrong, but before he could speak Alice unburied her face from her trembling hands and between her intense sobs he made out the words, "I'm late . . . I'm late." 2004 Dishonorable Mention: Cory Gano, Camas, WA Dark and Stormy Night It was a stark and dormy night--the kind of Friday night in the dorm where wistful women/girls without dates ovulated pointlessly and dreamed of steamy sex with bad boy/men in the backseat of a Corvette--like the one on Route 66, only a different color, though the color was hard to determine because the TV show was in black and white--if only Corvettes had back seats. 2004 Winner: David Kay, Lake Charles, LA It was a dark and stormy night--actually not all that dark, but more dusky or maybe cloudy, and to say "stormy" may be overstating things a bit, although the sidewalks were still wettish and smelled of ozone, and, truth be told, characterizing the time as night is a stretch as it was more in the late, late afternoon because I think Oprah was still on. 2004 Runner-Up: Gregory Snider, MD, Lexington, KY It was another dork and Stormy Knight--after snapping the last of his palm dampened dollar bills into the frazzled elastic of her G string--sent him packing precisely three-eighths of a mile down Highway 20 to the spot where she'd promised him a glorious glimpse of self-awareness, and where he would discover a slight depression in the asphalt and find himself quizzically contemplating the adjacent Department of Transportation sign that read simply: "Dip in Road." 2004 Dishonorable Mention: Rick Sutherland, Depoe Bay, OR Detective Detective Micky Blarke arrived on the scene at 2:14 am, and gave his cigarette such a severe pull that rookie Paul Simmons swore the insides of the detective's cheeks touched, but the judge indicated that that amount of detail was not necessary in his testimony, and instructed the jury to disregard that statement. 2004 Winner: Joe Polvino, Webster, NY The knife handle jutted from her chest like one of the plastic pop-up timers in a frozen turkey, but from the blood pooling around the wound, it was apparent that this bird wasn't done. 2004 Runner-Up: Alaine Sepulveda, Las Cruces, NM "After several minutes, Detective Wilson, standing over the lifeless, tuxedo-clad corpse, the spandex tights it had been strangled with still around its neck, realized that the poor ringmaster had simply been a victim of circus dancers." 2004 Dishonorable Mention: Jeonghyun Kim, Mount Waverley, Victoria, Australia Historical Fiction Galileo Galilei gazed expectantly through his newly invented telescope and then recoiled in sudden horror -- his prized thoroughbred's severed neck, threateningly discarded in a murky mass of interstellar dust (known to future generations as the Horsehead Nebula), left little doubt about where the Godfather and his Vatican musclemen stood on the recent geocentric/heliocentric debate. 2004 Winner: Don Mowbray, San Antonio, TX Fiction for the Erudite Clementine sat in the shade of a beech tree, of the family Fagaceae, the leaves of which were more or less ovate, being perhaps not quite as pointed as those of the North American, grandifolia species of the Fagus genus that are the color of a swimming pool that had been left too long without chlorine, but neither were they like those of Fagus sylvatica var. purpurea that are the color of dried burgundy stains on cream linen. 2004 Winner: Geoff Beech, Cochabamba, Bolivia The cat's whiskers twitched like the wings of a butterfly, not a large butterfly like a monarch, but a small one, like an Eastern Pine Elfin, which camouflages wonderfully with the bark of trees, not just pine trees, but also elm trees, whose slender twigs wave in the early spring breeze, looking like the twitching whiskers of the cat, which I have just mentioned. 2004 Runner-Up: Megan Z. Dinerman, King of Prussia, PA He heard a bang, well not really a bang but more of a crash with metallic overtones of platinum-encrusted steel alloys, hammering against unyielding iron and iridium plates; or maybe it was the clash of huge nickel-zinc rods hitting molybdenum fused sheets of tantalum, then he felt a stab of pain and heard another bang, and wished, instead of using his extensive metallurgy skills to try and analyze the sound, he would have run like hell when he first saw the gun pointed at him. 2004 Dishonorable Mention: Ken Loomes, Winnipeg, Manitoba Romance Looking up from his plate of escargots, Sean gazed across the table at Sharon and sadly realized that her bubbly personality now reminded him of the bubbles you get when you put salt on a slug and it squirms around and foams all over the place, and her moist lips were also like the slime on a slug but before you salted it, though after all these years Sharon still smelled better than slugs, but that could have been the garlic butter on her escargots. 2004 Winner: David K. Lynch, Topanga, CA I first saw her from across the crowded dance floor, cedar I think, (as if I can reference a specie of wood planks at a glance) I just know it wasn't that yellowish basketball court wood, the type with the glossy veneer (now THAT, I could recognize), anyway, she had the refined elegance and demure fragility of a really old Princess Leia. 2004 Runner-Up: Scott McIlhany, Bellingham, WA As she eased from our impassioned doorway kiss to slip into something more comfortable, Julia's warm breath caressed my face like a hot winter blast from the foyer of a two-star restaurant where they try to warm you up real quick so you're more likely to go in all the way and eat their food, only they leave you hanging by the "Please wait to be seated" sign because they have to clean up your table from the previous customer. 2004 Dishonorable Mentions: Brian Nash, Derry, NH Vile Puns Sleepless in Seattle, sleepless in Schenectady, and now--damn her bad luck--sleepless in this god-forsaken pit Brad assured her was a perfectly lovely out-of-the way and darling older, but totally updated and refurbished, accommodation flushed with sunlight and surrounded by swirling blue waters in Seward named the Tide Ebola Inn. 2004 Winner: Pat Merrill, San Anselmo, CA Hans sipped from his bottle of German Bru-hoff beer and idly read the label: "Bru-hoff, a heady-nosed Rhine beer has a slightly briny pose, and if you've ever drawn it, you would like the way it flows, but all of the other Rhine beers, Dusen lagers, and thick ales, they never beat our Bru-hoff in the yearly Rhine beer games." 2004 Runner-Up: Roger J. McNichols, Pearland, TX As Reynoldo lit the votive candle at the grotto for San Jose de los Platanos and prayed for the healthy delivery of his first child, he heard a disembodied voice say, "Your daughter will be 17 inches long," to which Reynoldo replied, "do you know the weight, too, San Jose? 2004 Dishonorable Mentions: Tom O'Leary, Covina CA Alas, all he wanted was to be the best barber in the world, even if only by a hair, but, alas he found his ambition thwarted by a headlong rush of fate and an unexpected side effect of his tonsorial skill -- everyone he served became strangely calmer and less argumentative, and he discovered that people were coming to him only for his kinder cuts, this barber of civility. 2004 Dishonorable Mentions: Alan B. Combs, Austin, TX 2003 They had but one last remaining night together, so they embraced each other as tightly as that two-flavor entwined string cheese that is orange and yellowish-white, the orange probably being a bland Cheddar and the white . . . Mozzarella, although it could possibly be Provolone or just plain American, as it really doesn't taste distinctly dissimilar from the orange, yet they would have you believe it does by coloring it differently. Mariann Simms, Wetumpka, AL Winning sentence, 2003 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The flock of geese flew overhead in a "V" formation - not in an old-fashioned-looking Times New Roman kind of a "V", branched out slightly at the two opposite arms at the top of the "V", nor in a more modern-looking, straight and crisp, linear Arial sort of "V" (although since they were flying, Arial might have been appropriate), but in a slightly asymmetric, tilting off-to-one-side sort of italicized Courier New-like "V" - and LaFonte knew that he was just the type of man to know the difference. John Dotson (U.S. Naval Officer), Arlington, VA Runner-Up, 2003 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Colin grabbed the switchgear and slammed the spritely Vauxhall Vixen into a lower gear as he screamed through the roundabout heading toward the familiar pink rowhouse in Puking-On-The-Wold, his mind filled with the image of his comely Olive, dressed in some lacy underthing, waiting on the couch with only a smile and a cucumber sandwich, hoping that his lunch hour would provide sufficient time for both a naughty little romp and a digestive biscuit. Randy Groom, Visalia, CA Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 2003 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Children's Literature The Prince looked down at the motionless form of Sleeping Beauty, wondering how her supple lips would feel against his own and contemplating whether or not an Altoid was strong enough to stand up against the kind of morning breath only a hundred year's nap could create. 2003 Winner: Lynne Sella, Susanville, CA Dark & Stormy Night Category It was almost a dark and stormy night - not dark or stormy enough to be called that but just the kind of sweaty night that makes your shirt stick to your back and make you wish you were still at home with the air conditioning and eating pig skins and watching the Martha Stewart trial on T.V. 2003 Winner: Sarah Harris, White Rock, NM It was a barky and wormy night at Dr. Kilmore's 24-Hour Veterinary Emporium when, right in the middle of his 3:00 AM stool watch, Alberto suddenly realized that, pound for pound, Shih-Tzus swallow more tennis bracelets than most dogs twice their size. 2003 Runner-Up: Jan Socie, Campbell CA It was a dark and stormy night and the enormous orb spider-web, lodged betwixt gigantic branches of the ancient oak, twinkled and sparkled whenever lightning coruscated through the firmament, resembling an ectoplasmic pizza studded with a million round, well cut, D, 50pt, FL diamonds, so utterly beautiful any couturier would give his soul, or even pay a small fortune, to be able to wrap it gracefully around the skeletal body of a supermodel. 2003 Dishonorable Mention: Anna Rotenberg, Sao Paulo, Brazil Detective Detective Inspector Mike Norman slipped six fingers into his overcoat pocket, five of them clad in a latex glove and attached to his palm, while the sixth was wrapped in a plastic evidence bag and apparently belonged to the kidnapped pianist Ricardo Moore, or, as it now seemed likely, the kidnapped ex-pianist Ricardo Moore. 2003 Winner: Alan Campbell, Edinburgh, Scotland Mac was the crustiest ex-LAPD homicide detective with three ex-wives, two mortgages, a greedy daughter wasting time at college, a gay son playing acid-blues punk in some Sacramento dive, and a liver that had been bitch slapped by cheap vodka so many times it looked like a bag of yellow fat, who ever walked into my floral and gift shop. 2003 Runner-Up: Robert Salsbury, Veradale, WA They say she carried her own warmth around with her, like one of those thermoregulating arctic mammals, say, a polar bear, or a baby harp seal (though not a penguin, which is antarctic, anyway, and not a mammal, but a bird), but she wasn't fat or blubbery, which makes it all the more unbelievable why anyone would have wanted to club her to death for her fur coat, which wasn't even white, I'm told, but black. 2003 Dishonorable Mentions: Harry H. Buerkett, Urbana, IL Had Dorothy known Duncan was a psychopath who would seduce, then brutally murder her, and that her best friend Dana, a forensic pathologist would investigate her death and also fall in love with him, but be saved just in time by Dwayne, her much maligned colleague, perhaps she wouldn't have bought him that Screwdriver. 2003 Dishonorable Mentions: Karen Clark, Barkers Creek, Victoria, Australia He knew that, at most, he had five seconds left to live, one one-thousand, two one-thousand, the gun barrel pointing at his face like a scolding finger, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, the hired assassin Ricardo? grip tightening on the trigger, five white elephantsS SIX white elephants, and then a bright blast of light as he wondered which was really the most accurate way to count five seconds. 2003 Dishonorable Mentions: Vincent M. Zito, Monroe, CT I'd stumbled onto solving my first murder case, having found myself the only eyewitness, yet no matter how frantically I pleaded with John Law that the perp was right in front of them and the very dame they'd been grilling - the sultry but devious Miss Kitwinkle, who played the grieving patsy the way a concert pianist player plays a piano - the cops just kept smiling and stuffing crackers in my beak. 2003 Dishonorable Mentions: Chris Esco, Miami, FL The sobering scene was laid out before Detective Robinson like a centerfold spread in Better Homes and Gardens or Martha Stewart Living, if the splayed bodies could be considered home furnishings such as hand-knotted 100% wool Tibetan area rugs or allergy-free hypodown throw pillows stuffed with European goose down and the blood on the walls had been a carefully spattered burnt vermillion latex paint for a classic aged or contemporary Jackson Pollock-like finish. 2003 Dishonorable Mentions: Theresa Olin, Nineveh, NY Romance She lay next to him that night, regretting sleeping with another while they were broken up, knowing she had done nothing wrong but feeling vaguely unclean, like freshly washed, once-folded laundry that has been shoved off the bed onto the floor and slept on by the dog. 2003 Winner: J. J. McClanahan, Tyrone, GA "Bring a bottle of wine and wear something uncomplicated - I'm in no mood for a struggle tonight," rolled from Jean-Pierre's lips like a bowling ball shooting up the return ramp, only to slow itself abruptly at the top before ka-whonking! into the balls already lined up there like all the lines she had heard before, and Sylvia knew at last that all the good ones were not married, gay, or in Mexican prisons. 2003 Runner-Up: James Pokines, Hickam AFB, HI Chloe hated the way the mud squished up between the toes of her Birkenstocks like cappuccino-colored bog-ooze, as she ran to meet Teddy, who hated her Birkenstocks anyway, and would complain bitterly about her soggy feet as they shared some stolen moments in the back of his ice-cream truck. 2003 Dishonorable Mentions: Patricia Benedict, Calgary, Alberta, Canada The ballerina stood on point, her toes curled like shrimp, not deep-fried shrimp because, as brittle as they are, they would have cracked under the pressure, but tender ebi-kind-of-shrimp, pink and luscious as a Tokyo sunset, wondering if her lover was in the Ginza, wooing the geisha with eyes reminiscent of roe, which she liked better than ebi anyway. 2003 Dishonorable Mentions: Brian Tacang, El Prado, NM There was something unnerving about the way Jim looked at Doris that day, something which made her tremble, which brought back painful childhood memories of a boat trip off the coast of Western Finland flooding back like a flood, flowing back, onto a boat, oh, you see why it was so difficult for her to get the memories out of her head once they had flowed in there. 2003 Dishonorable Mentions: Michael Minihan, Johns Hill, Waterford, Ireland. Charles thought Stephanie was at her most attractive when she was irritated--lips pursed, cheeks flushed, and eyes flashing, though not so much like lightening flashing as like a spark of static electricity from touching a fluffy cat after shuffling across plush carpet in a cold, dark room. 2003 Dishonorable Mentions: Deanna Stewart, Austin, TX "Although Sara could believe the brassiere she had found was from a mix-up at the laundromat, that the lipstick on Bill's collar really had been from a cramped elevator, that the stiletto heel was indeed something the cat dragged in, when she pulled Chloe's unmistakable prosthetic arm from under the bed, she realized she had been played for a fool." 2003 Dishonorable Mentions: Nicholas R. Eaton, Saint Charles, MO Spy Standing in the concessions car of the Orient Express as it hissed and lurched away from the station, Special Agent Chu could feel enemy eyes watching him from the inky shadows and knew that he was being tested, for although he had never tasted a plug of tobacco in his life, he was impersonating an arms dealer known to be a connoisseur, so he knew that he, the Chosen One, Chow Chu, had no choice but to choose the choicest chew on the choo-choo. 2003 Winner: Loren Haarsma, Grand Rapids, MI It was a bright, beautiful day in Baltimore--not one of those dark and stormy nights in a land far away where no normal person could ever have lived because it was inhabited by evil sorcerers and fire-breathing dragons--so Forbes MacVain decided to eat his tuna sandwich on a bench overlooking the Inner Harbor while he waited for Yuri to make the dead drop. 2003 Runner-Up: Patrick Bomgardner, Baltimore, MD Vile Pun "The Insect Keeper General, sitting astride his giant hovering aphid, surveyed the battlefield which reeked with the stench of decay and resonated with the low drone of the tattered and dying mutant swarms as their legs kicked forlornly at the sky before turning to his master and saying, 'My Lord, your flies are undone.'" 2003 Winner: Andrew Vincent, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England The ancient Peruvian Airlines DC-3 lumbered slowly over the snow-capped peaks far below as Gunderson turned to Ricketts and marveled at how their avian import business "Incahoots" had led them once again to the far reaches of South America in search of the elusive gray-spotted owl. 2003 Runner-Up: Miltiades Mandros, Oakland, CA The final auction item in the estate was the electric home in the frozen tundra, often referred to as "the top of the world," even though the world doesn't really have a top (or a bottom for that matter), and it was expected that Mrs. Claus, a pleasantly plump lady who smelled of cookie dough, would again have to outbid the jovial fat man's former employees to purchase his assets, that is until the gavel fell and the auctioneer announced solemnly, "The elves have left the building." 2003 Dishonorable Mentions: Jay Dardenne, Baton Rouge, LA "When the noisy parrots took flight Dark Vador leapt from the sylvan shadows brandishing his exterminator pod and mercilessly sprayed the flock with its sizzling lethal rays, and as the silent spiraling cloud of bright green feathers floated to the ground he hissed, "I hate sky squawkers!" 2003 Dishonorable Mentions: Brian Racher, Cessy, France Sarah felt bored and unsatisfied, even though her job as a nurse's aide included helping patients and keeping track of the billiards equipment in the recreation room at the Venereal Disease Treatment Center, and she wondered what her mother had been thinking all those years when she repeatedly told her that a young lady should mind herpes and cues. 2003 Dishonorable Mentions: Brad Jolly, Longmont, CO 2002 On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom had always been rocky, not quite a roller-coaster ride but more like when the toilet-paper roll gets a little squashed so it hangs crooked and every time you pull some off you can hear the rest going bumpity-bumpity in its holder until you go nuts and push it back into shape, a degree of annoyance that Angela had now almost attained. Rephah Berg, Oakland CA Winning sentence, 2002 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The professor looked down at his new young lover, who rested fitfully, lashed as she was with duct tape to the side of his stolen hovercraft, her head lolling gently in the breeze, and as they soared over the buildings of downtown St. Paul to his secret lair he mused that she was much like a sweet ripe juicy peach, except for her not being a fuzzy three-inch sphere produced by a tree with pink blossoms and that she had internal organs and could talk. Charles Howland, St. Paul, MN Runner-Up, 2002 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Children's Literature Dorothy could hardly believe her ears as the uniformed Munchkin reeled off the citations: flying without a license, flying an unregistered building, reckless flying causing injury or death, parking in an unauthorized place, double-parking (vertical), failure to give way to pedestrians, failure to indicate, 2nd-degree witchslaughter, and closing her eyes she fervently prayed, "Please, I want to go home . . ." 2002 Winner: Matthew Roscoe, Auckland, New Zealand Pulling her red coat tightly around her and running the gauntlet of wolf whistles from the nearby building site as she made her way to the short cut through the woods, Maureen wondered yet again why her grandmother could not do her shopping on-line or at least get the super-market to deliver. 2002 Runner-Up: Elisabeth Glyptis, South Shields Tyne and Wear, England. UK "Oh dear, Mr. Hippity Hop the Bunny is late, and if he does not arrive soon, we shan't be able to hold a birthday party for Good Old Busy Beaver before it is time for me to leave the Fluffy Forrest, which shall be most disappointing indeed," said Susan, because she was completely smashed on the narcotics she had purchased in the alleyway behind the club from a foul-smelling yet reputable dealer called "Skullz." 2002 Dishonorable Mentions: Nicolas Juzda, Montreal, Quebec, Canada Miss Francesca often lounged in the tiny wood beyond the stile, and here she lay languidly watching days pass into night; for it was in that good night that Miss Francesca crept so very stealthily amongst the daffodils, finding baby bunnies and mice, tearing their heads off and dragging their lifeless bodies to the back porch door of kindly old Mr. Marvenschire. 2002 Dishonorable Mentions: Albert T. Keyack, Ambler, PA "After many years of constant striving, during which Timmy the Tree grew to be the tallest pine in the forest, men from the National Lumber Corporation visited the Magic Woods and told Timmy that he was to be cut down and used as fuel to further the interests of big business, and in the process he would add to the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, eventually unbalancing the planet's ecosystem and destroying all life on Earth, all because he'd simply tried too hard." 2002 Dishonorable Mentions: Emily Garber, Princeton, NJ Dark & Stormy Night Category It was a stark and dormie night at the University of Texas as the on-campus residents poured into the central quad, where the shimmering, wafting, piercing, soaking beams from an authentic Longhorn cheese moon lit the walls of the encircling buildings the way a really large flashlight using AA batteries dimly brightens a cavernous mineshaft, for the results of the city leaders' baking contest, hoping that they'd be able to shag some pies from the Austin Powers. 2002 Winner: Bill Crowley, Santa Rosa, CA Toadstool, the lackey of the evil black wizard Dar Kand who had kidnapped and hid Off-White's knight in shining armor (Snow Off-White was a princess by birthright and a detective by profession), had his head stuck between the floor and one of Off-White's leather boots; Off-White's question was simple, "Where did Dar Kand store my knight?" 2002 Runner-up: John Grayshaw, Bayside NY Marie-Antoinette, the dusky-eyed Comtesse de la Belle Blague that is, rather than the more famous wife of Louis XVI, although coincidentally she was in fact descended from the same aristocratic stock, looked out across the windswept, storm-lashed terrace where her soiree had been in full swing up until a few minutes ago and apologized seductively to her English guest: "C'est vraiment une nuit sombre et orageuse, but later per'aps I can make amends . . ." 2002 Dishonorable Mention: Francis Turner, Mouans Sartoux, France Detective Chief Inspector Blancharde knew that this murder would be easy to solve-despite the fact that the clever killer had apparently dismembered his victim, run the corpse through a chipper-shredder with some Columbian beans to throw off the police dogs, and had run the mix through the industrial-sized coffee maker in the diner owned by Joseph Tilby (the apparent murder victim)--if only he could figure out who would want a hot cup of Joe. 2002 Winner: Matthew Chambers, Hambleton WV Detective Driscoll had fallen off the wagon like a frozen turkey from a Goodwill helicopter and, like a talking elephant reunited with his old circus buddies after 50 years, he reminisced about the most memorable collars of his career -- and he guffawed so hard that he fell off the barstool like another turkey from another helicopter as he recollected the time he arrested a mime for shoplifting and had to say "You have a right to remain silent . . ." 2002 Runner-Up: Vince Lucid, Pennellville, NY The jangling phone disturbed the fly, the blue bottle fly, the blue bottle fly performing precise, low-swooping wingovers above my four-sugar coffee while the potted palm made a feeble attempt at photosynthesis with the naked 25 watt bulb that hung from the cracked plaster of my low-rent office on a less-than-desirable (unless you were vermin) stretch of Pico. 2002 Dishonorable Mentions: John Knoerle, Chicago, IL It was a warm, rank odor that hit Detective Swatworth's nostrils, breaking into components that seemed hauntingly familiar, reminiscent of dangerous deeds past, lighting up every wary fiber in his torso, warning him to be wary of what lay ahead, on guard, finger on the trigger, then relaxed again as he realized it was coming from his own armpit. 2002 Dishonorable Mentions: Duke Smith, Warren, Oregon Spy It was a long and boring flight to Moscow's Sheremetevo Airport and when Special Agent Jasper Smoot debarked and walked into the restroom marked "Dama" in Cyrillic he might have found the woman there attractive except she had more whiskers than a Civil War general and was pointing a crossbow at his head. 2002 Winner: Michael McNierney, Greeley, CO Romance Hermann lay with Esmerelda, entwined with one another among love-tangled sheets and he thought how this one constant yet mercurial woman was one whom he could hold in his arms forever, although eventually he'd have to get up to go to the bathroom. 2002 Winner: Vance Atkins, Seattle, WA Ralph awoke groggily, and after searching through the overflowing ashtray on the nightstand for a half-smoked cigarette, looked over at the rumpled form of Lila sleeping next to him in bed and wondered idly why making love with her made him feel as though his body had been pounded by heavy surf. 2002 Runner-Up: Mary Britton, Berrien Springs, MI As she lay in the embrace of her lover's arms following their ardent lovemaking, Sharon quietly hoped the moment could last forever, well, not really forever, since she had a pedicure in two hours, followed by lunch with her former college roommates, but at least for a long while or so. 2002 Dishonorable Mention: Tom O'Leary, Covina, California Vile Pun It wasn't a dark and stormy night when the Russian space station burned up in its final descent through the atmosphere, so it cast a glow on the face of a young Fiji girl sitting on the beach, causing her boy friend sitting next to her to utter, "Bei MIR bist du schoen." 2002 Winner: Jerome Radding, M.D., Laguna Woods, CA The giant ape's broken body lay upon the asphalt and I didn't know which had finally done him in -- the planes' machine guns, the fall from atop the building, or maybe just a broken heart -- but it was all so heart-wrenching, so tragic, his climbing the Empire State Building just to get a glimpse of that woman's gorgeous derriere, and the sheer waste of it all finally prompted me to pronounce my own benediction over his great, furry carcass: "'Twas booty killed the beast!" 2002 Runner-Up: Justin Gustainis, Plattsburgh, NY The Sultan, having dutifully consulted with his palace sages, historians, and theologians, was finally convinced that nothing in the lore of his religion could guide him in the selection of a Network Operating System, and the conclusion was now clear to him, that though most computers in the Palace Administration should run under WINDOWS, yet the Harem Management must be served by UNIX. 2002 Dishonorable Mentions: Harry W. Hickey, Arlington, VA. What though the steed that carried the young knight over the streets of old Prague was foaled in far Araby, what though the sword at his side came from distant Spain, what though his armor had been formed on German anvil, yet the patriot heart of the warrior was all that mattered; in that mail there was a Czech! 2002 Dishonorable Mentions: Harry W. Hickey, Arlington, VA This is a story of twin Siamese kittens, or, more specifically, of their shared appendage; it is a tail of two kitties. 2002 Dishonorable Mentions: David Bubenik, Palo Alto, CA Dispatched to the steamy tropics by crusty editor, Warren Pease, to interview renowned spiritualist, Serrafima Raire, in her grass shack, which he truly feared would exacerbate his chronic asthma, London Times ace reporter John Donne found her dying of jungle fever, forcing him to write despairingly in his cable to the home office, "Medium Raire not well - Donne." 2002 Dishonorable Mentions: Allan W. Eckert, Bellefontaine, OH 2001 A small assortment of astonishingly loud brass instruments raced each other lustily to the respective ends of their distinct musical choices as the gates flew open to release a torrent of tawny fur comprised of angry yapping bullets that nipped at Desdemona's ankles, causing her to reflect once again (as blood filled her sneakers and she fought her way through the panicking crowd) that the annual Running of the Pomeranians in Liechtenstein was a stupid idea. Sera Kirk, Vancouver, BC Winning sentence, 2001 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest The lone monarch butterfly flew flutteringly through the cemetery, dancing on and glancing against headstone after headstone before alighting atop Willie Mitchell's already lowered casket, causing gasps of awe to fly from the open mouths of five or six lingering mourners, until a big shovelful of dirt landed on it and it died. Julie Stangeland, Seal Beach, CA Runner-Up, 2001 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Children's Literature "Terry the Tarantula and Wendy the Wasp were frolicking and cavorting together in the Flowery Meadow, ( as they were the best of friends in all the Enchanted Forest of Miggly-Wompsly) when, all of a sudden, and with no warning whatsoever, Wendy accidentally stabbed Terry with her stinger, making her very sad for she knew that soon her poison would paralyze her friend and after a while her eggs would hatch inside him, and then her happy wriggling larva would slowly eat him alive, but Terry tried to smile and would have told her not to be sad as this was how the Circle of Life was continued, but he was in too much pain and, as I mentioned before, paralyzed." 2001 Winner: Delano Lopez Washington, DC Dark & Stormy Night Category It was a dark and stormy night as Jacque the baker slogged through the black cheerless alleyways of Avignon, the cold Provencal rain soaking him to the bone, increasing his fury at having chosen the life of a bread maker, for the early hours truly went against his grain and it chaffed him that he trudged to work in wee hours of the morning while the rest of the world loafed in bed; what more proof did he need of his misery, why did he bother, surely it was not for the dough, exasperating as the rise and fall of the boulangerie's business might be, and suddenly he knew with conviction that he was, after all, just a gluten for punishment. 2001 Winner: James Bardsley Skillman, NJ Detective The graphic crime-scene photo that stared up at Homicide Inspector Chuck Venturi from the center of his desk was not a pretty picture, though it could have been, Chuck mused, had it only been shot in soft focus with a shutter speed of 1/125 second at f 5.6 or so. 2001 Winner: Ms. Rephah Berg, Oakland CA Romance "Alas," Vanessa sighed, "What can one do when one's relationship begins to stale in much the same way as a day-old cinnamon roll which was wrapped in wax paper rather than having been sealed in plastic, and can only be made remotely palatable for a very brief period when reheated for a few seconds in a microwave, after which it becomes even more revolting than it was in the first place?" 2001 Winner: Carol E. Scott Green Bay, WI Vile Pun Luigi knew deep down in the pits of his four stomachs that he and his fellow bovines on the island could no longer rely on the meager rations of electricity doled out to them by Farmer Pietro to stay warm, and he sought to convince the herd that the heat generated by a few hours of singing would give them the independence they sought, saying simply, "One day mooing heats our isle; I can beat Pete's supply--get some more hay!" 2001 Winner: Michael Knab Rockville, MD 2000 The heather-encrusted Headlands, veiled in fog as thick as smoke in a crowded pub, hunched precariously over the moors, their rocky elbows slipping off land's end, their bulbous, craggy noses thrust into the thick foam of the North Sea like bearded old men falling asleep in their pints. Gary Dahl, Los Gatos, CA Winning sentence, 2000 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Jack Maverick, ex-federal agent, burst through the window of the drug lord's palace with a sneer on his face and guns blazing, sending a sea of glass into the room that would take weeks for Hilda, the maid who came in every Tuesday and Thursday, to clean even if she worked unpaid overtime, which she didn't since in today's world it's a seller's market where maids who speak decent English are concerned. Nicolas Juzda, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Runner-Up, 2000 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Dark and Stormy Night Category Jesse rolled his eyes heavenward as Caleb, his neo-Amish cousin, nearly fainted as they passed by the mini-mall's Victoria Secret window display, explaining to Caleb that "It was a stocking store, Mennonite!" 2000 Winner: Matthew Chambers, Parsons WV In late 19th-century France, the Catholic Church leaders became increasingly uneasy that French sociologist Emile Durkheim's "Formes ??entaires de la vie religieuse" might be drawing priests and theologians away from the established church and faith, so the Church Fathers advised their clergy to, when reading Durkheim's work, concentrate on a simple mantra, so as to counter any dissuasive effect the sociologist's writing might exert on their faith; it was, "E. Durkheim, stir me not!" 2000 Runner-Up: Gordon Anderson, Lawrence, KS It was a dark and stormy night . . . well, not too dark, actually, since the moon was full and shining brightly, the streetlights were all functioning for once; and as for stormy, I suppose the occasional, almost listless flash of heat lightning combined with a haze created by the steady, mist-like drizzle meeting the hot pavement underfoot could qualify, were one give to over-dramatization or hyperbole. 2000 Dishonorable Mention: Martha McBride, Bloomington, IL Detective Becky Flatbush was the quintessential Girl Cop: wisecracking, shrewd, prone to PMS-inspired shooting "mistakes," yet tender, compassionate, and actually very good with criminals when she was not feeling bloated and cranky and like she wanted to kill someone just to relieve her monthly depression. 2000 Winner: Laura Sebastian, Miami, Florida How had he missed it, Detective Cali asked himself, when the signs were all there: the glazed look in his eyes, the tiny droplets of sweat that welled up on his forehead, the violent mood swings and of course the tell-tale white dust in his mustache--all pointed to his partner's ravenous addiction to powdered donuts. 2000 Runner-Up: Michael Ferraro, McKee City, NJ Romance Theirs was a love that transcended time, ran roughshod over moral dogmas, guffawed in the face of adversity, rent asunder the shackles of social convention and took a sledgehammer to the crumbling walls of religious doctrine: a passionate love, a tender love, a selfless love, an undying love: not bad for two gerbils born on opposite sides of the glass partition. 2000 Winner: Kevin Ruston, Barnet, Hertfordshire, England Raven Hall -- that gape-mouthed, gray gargoyle of County Cork -- loomed above the misty Irish vales (the spring rains having recently abated) as young Deidre, bound in servitude to its drooling master so her beloved Bryan would be freed upon disembarkation at Australia's prison colony where he was sent for theft of a twig to be used as kindling, approached. 2000 Runner-Up: Mary Ann Unger, Ewing, NJ His eyes bored into hers like the slowly turning bit of a 2.5 horsepower drill press set to slow speed to keep from scoring the surface of a priceless mahogany table being repaired for an estate auction that was not expected to bring in much, anyway. 2000 Dishonorable Mentions: Martin M. Conrad II, Colorado Springs, CO Sarah was a blue-blooded mistress of the Main Line, but she couldn't stop Jack from prowling the back streets and alleys of her mind, couldn't stop him from renting a cheap room in her remembrances, for he dwelled in the seamy underside of her soul, and yet the memory of his infidelities burned a scar on her heart like a bad tatoo. 2000 Dishonorable Mentions: Patrick Burns, Newton, N.J. It could be said that Martha and Isaac had chemistry, but Martha had never been good at chemistry, and sex with Isaac had been like an experiment wherein she had accidentally mixed ammonia and bleach, burned her eyebrows off, lost all sense of smell for weeks, and never saw the family cat again. 2000 Dishonorable Mentions: Kelly Griffith, Media, PA Vile Puns (co-winners) "We have created a monster, Doktor Frankenstein!" screech Igor, the doktor's right and left hand man, his little body quivering with delight, and before the good doctor could stop him Igor waved various human limbs and organs in the patchwork face of the giant, howling, "Tell me, stranger, are you from these parts?" It was the night before Christmas when Santa Claus's sleigh team became one member short because of a sudden illness, and when an inflatable plastic reindeer was used to fill the void in the team so no one would take notice the missing animal, Regis, Chief of Elves, asked Santa, "Is that your vinyl Prancer?" 2000 Winner: John L. Ashman, Houston, TX Sighing, the professor rapidly scanned the English 101 term paper on "Early American Railways" submitted by the class dunce, determined almost at a glance that large portions had been lifted verbatim and without attribution from Clemens' "The Gilded Age" and "Innocents Abroad," assigned a failing mark to the pathetic fraud, and scrawled in red across the cover sheet, "Come, sir, this is TOO, TOO TWAIN." 2000 Runner-Up: Richard Raymond III, Roanoke, VA After twenty years, twenty years as head avian keeper at Fleishacker Zoo, Norman sat distractedly on his Ethan Allen post-colonial solid mahogany settee, pulling at his nose, and going over one more time the stupidity that had cost him his labor of love, because he knew that he was responsible for putting the locks on all the bird cages--the Bald Eagles, the tropical Toucans, the Marbled Godwits, all of them--but that miserable Thursday evening he had missed a cage for the very first time as he had daydreamed on by the Bay Gulls enclosure, and they had escaped, and there went his job--all because he forgot to put the locks on the Bay Gulls. 2000 Dishonorable Mentions: Bill Crowley, Santa Rosa, CA The sobbing, pregnant, kimono-clad bride, the sweaty groom with the odd shoes, the angry Japanese man with a look of nobility and a really big sword-all the makings of a shogun wedding. 2000 Dishonorable Mentions: Rev. William F. Charles, Birmingham, AL Lance Corporal Murphy stood in mute shock at his court martial for stealing a book of Shakespeare's works from the camp library, ignoring the advice of his fellow Marines that he couldn't take a Hamlet without breaking a few regs. 2000 Dishonorable Mentions: Kevin P. Craver, Streator, IL 1999 Through the gathering gloom of a late-October afternoon, along the greasy, cracked paving-stones slick from the sputum of the sky, Stanley Ruddlethorp wearily trudged up the hill from the cemetery where his wife, sister, brother, and three children were all buried, and forced open the door of his decaying house, blissfully unaware of the catastrophe that was soon to devastate his life. Dr. David Chuter, Kingston, Surrey, England Winning sentence, 1999 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest He had the regal bearing of a TV weatherman, his hair twinkling like the crystals in Ivana Trump's chandelier, his teeth white and snappy like high-starch boxers, his jaw strong and sharp as a Canadian high-pressure system, and an El Nino just itching to wreak havoc in her trailer park. Elayne Roman, W. Caldwell, NJ Runner-Up, 1999 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Children's Literature The greedy schoolbus crept through the streets devouring clumps of children until its belly groaned with surfeit, then lumbered back to the schoolhouse where it obligingly regurgitated its meal onto the grounds. 1999 Winner: Wendy Lawton, Hilmar, CA "You know, I could come to like this place much better than Kansas, after all," perked Dorothy to the Wicked Witch as they oversaw the Munchkin slave laborers refining poppies for the opium dens of the Emerald City. 1999 Runner-Up: Vance Atkins, Seattle, WA Dark & Stormy Night Category When the Independent Counsel emerged each night from the adjourned closed-door proceedings, reporters assessed how zealously he was currently prosecuting from his facial expression, which on one night might be that familiar affably light smile, while on another night it could be a menacingly dark scowl; and so, as our story begins, they surmised he was playing hardball, for it was a dark-Ken Starr-mien night. 1999 Winner: Ronald Snow, Huntsville, AL "Just look, ya bloomin' idiot," Eleanor Rugglesby-Bobsyeruncle, the world-famous cockney art collector, screamed at her assistant, Ivan Ivanovich, illegitimate son of the Secret Czar, Ivanovichi, "ya packed me priceless Don Quixote paintin' in with a sack of bloody Spam, it was the darn cans tore me knight!" 1999 Runner-Up: Allan D. Burrows, Mississauga, Ontario, CANADA Always confrontation, Bobby, the hotheaded Indiana basketball coach, logged on to an Internet chat room where "The Wizard of Oz" devotees were discussing the multi-layered symbolism of the Scarecrow, and infuriated everyone by tersely posting, "It was a dork in straw--B. Knight." 1999 Dishonorable Mention: Ernie Santilli, Drexel Hill, PA Romance The oil made their skin glisten as their bodies moved in slow synchronous rhythm on the beach, the water gently flowing up around their legs, birds floating in the surf accompanying their moans with songs of pain and despair, otter and seal carcasses washing ashore around them, and it frightened her and exhilarated her at the same time that their love under the open sky might be discovered by a Sierra Club cleanup volunteer. 1999 Winner: Robert Chappell, Blanchardville WI The stranger clanked on Mrs. Dimmelwitz's commode, and she avidly watched him -- drinking in his pungent effluvial smell and gazing with flushed fascination at his tender, dewy buttocks peeping over his sagging tool belt -- until, as he cleared the clog she felt her heart (its valves narrowed by the hard-water deposits of lovelessness) break free of its bonds and float like fecund flotsam, drifting free of her dreary marriage, her crying baby, and even the bloated Huggie, which had caused the clog in the first place. 1999 Runner-Up: John Ochwat, Oklahoma City, OK Maggie had become so very attached to Butch these last few years, not so much like a remora on the side of a shark, nor even handcuffs in the night, but almost, but not quite, like an inoperable, yet benign, tumor, crenulating and bifurcating in the love-struck center of his brain. 1999 Dishonorable Mentions: Vance Atkins, Seattle, WA Drunk with rage and cheap tequila, his hazel eyes like a green pepper floating in picante sauce, Guy Caliente entered the hotel lobby, staggering noticeably as a three-legged Chihuahua in a noontime catfight, while Portabella Porcina, like an overfilled burrito in her beige satin dress, stared with unremitting astonishment and peculiar passion at his disheveled and sudden appearance and pondered the flotsam of their cruise ship romance, a lust lingering like a salsa stain on a white shirt. 1999 Dishonorable Mentions: Randall Heeres, Cadillac, MI As slowly as an over-encumbered messenger swallow carries news too ill and woeful to present to a king, especially in a barrage of precipitation, I commanded the muscles in my brow to wrinkle, much like poorly installed carpet when you run really fast and stop quickly, showing my general displeasure at the fact that my now life-long spouse had dyed her eyebrows to match her prostitute red, three-and-a-half inch pumps. 1999 Dishonorable Mentions: Christopher Robin Wible Jr, Providence, RI Vile Puns (co-winners) Forced by rising costs and lagging demand to make their leading product out of a cheaper metal, Hoosier Love, Inc. found that a special treatment process was needed to clean and coat their Indy 500 memento, a tiny fake-jewel-studded replica of an Offenhauser engine on a jeweler's chain, to protect it from the corrosive effect of chlorine, a process that appeared in the ISO 9000 Manufacturer's Manual under the title, "The Dechloration of Indy Pendants." 1999 Winner: Tom Rohde, Minneapolis, MN The Rashers of Bacon Street, hams every one, lived and breathed burlesque; or rather they did until that fateful night that their show was panned and they, consequently, canned and squealing for revenge, knew they had ceased to be vaudevillians and were about to become, instead, avowed villains. 1999 Winner: Dan Braverman, Houston, TX 1998 The corpse exuded the irresistible aroma of a piquant, ancho chili glaze enticingly enhanced with a hint of fresh cilantro as it lay before him, coyly garnished by a garland of variegated radicchio and caramelized onions, and impishly drizzled with glistening rivulets of vintage balsamic vinegar and roasted garlic oil; yes, as he surveyed the body of the slain food critic slumped on the floor of the cozy, but nearly empty, bistro, a quick inventory of his senses told corpulent Inspector Moreau that this was, in all likelihood, an inside job. Bob Perry, Milton, Massachusetts Winning sentence, 1998 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest 1997 The moment he laid eyes on the lifeless body of the nude socialite sprawled across the bathroom floor, Detective Leary knew she had committed suicide by grasping the cap on the tamper-proof bottle, pushing down and twisting while she kept her thumb firmly pressed against the spot the arrow pointed to, until she hit the exact spot where the tab clicks into place, allowing her to remove the cap and swallow the entire contents of the bottle, thus ending her life. Artie Kalemeris, Fairfax, Virginia Winning sentence, 1997 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest 1996 "Ace, watch your head!" hissed Wanda urgently, yet somehow provocatively, through red, full, sensuous lips, but he couldn't you know, since nobody can actually watch more than part of his nose or a little cheek or lips if he really tries, but he appreciated her warning. Janice Estey, Aspen, Colorado Winning sentence, 1996 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest 1995 Paul Revere had just discovered that someone in Boston was a spy for the British, and when he saw the young woman believed to be the spy's girlfriend in an Italian restaurant he said to the waiter, "Hold the spumoni--I'm going to follow the chick an' catch a Tory." John L. Ashman, Houston, Texas Winning sentence, 1995 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest 1994 As the fading light of a dying day filtered through the window blinds, Roger stood over his victim with a smoking .45, surprised at the serenity that filled him after pumping six slugs into the bloodless tyrant that mocked him day after day, and then he shuffled out of the office with one last look back at the shattered computer terminal lying there like a silicon armadillo left to rot on the information superhighway. Larry Brill, Austin, Texas Winning sentence, 1994 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest 1993 She wasn't really my type, a hard-looking but untalented reporter from the local cat box liner, but the first second that the third-rate representative of the fourth estate cracked open a new fifth of old Scotch, my sixth sense said seventh heaven was as close as an eighth note from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, so, nervous as a tenth grader drowning in eleventh-hour cramming for a physics exam, I swept her into my longing arms, and, humming "The Twelfth of Never," I got lucky on Friday the thirteenth. Wm. W. "Buddy" Ocheltree, Port Townsend, Washington Winning sentence, 1993 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest 1992 As the newest Lady Turnpot descended into the kitchen wrapped only in her celery-green dressing gown, her creamy bosom rising and falling like a temperamental souffle, her tart mouth pursed in distaste, the sous-chef whispered to the scullery boy, "I don't know what to make of her." Laurel Fortuner, Montendre, France Winning sentence, 1992 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest 1991 Sultry it was and humid, but no whisper of air caused the plump, laden spears of golden grain to nod their burdened heads as they unheedingly awaited the cyclic rape of their gleaming treasure, while overhead the burning orb of luminescence ascended its ever-upward path toward a sweltering celestial apex, for although it is not in Kansas that our story takes place, it looks godawful like it. Judy Frazier, Lathrop, Missouri Winning sentence, 1991 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest 1990 Delores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever skipping along smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an overdose of flouride as a child which caused her to suffer from chronic apathy, doomed herself to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless as an appendix and as lonely as a five-hundred pound barbell in a steroid-free fitness center. Linda Vernon, Newark, California Winning sentence, 1990 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest 1989 Professor Frobisher couldn't believe he had missed seeing it for so long--it was, after all, right there under his nose--but in all his years of research into the intricate and mysterious ways of the universe, he had never noticed that the freckles on his upper lip, just below and to the left of the nostril, partially hidden until now by a hairy mole he had just removed a week before, exactly matched the pattern of the stars in the Pleides, down to the angry red zit that had just popped up where he and his colleagues had only today discovered an exploding nova. Ray C. Gainey, Indianapolis, Indiana Winning sentence, 1989 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest 1988 Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek, shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit molding her body, which was as warm as the seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood; she was a woman driven--fueled by a single accelerant--and she needed a man, a man who wouldn't shift from his views, a man to steer her along the right road, a man like Alf Romeo. Rachel E. Sheeley, Williamsburg, Indiana Winning sentence, 1988 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest 1987 The notes blatted skyward as they rose over the Canada geese, feathered rumps mooning the day, webbed appendages frantically pedaling unseen bicycles in their search for sustenance, driven by cruel Nature's maxim, 'Ya wanna eat, ya gotta work,' and at last I knew Pittsburgh. Sheila B. Richter, Minneapolis, Minnesota Winning sentence, 1987 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest 1986 The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and pleasant, the second half still balmy and quite pleasant for those who hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know. Patricia E. Presutti, Lewiston, New York Winning sentence, 1986 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest 1985 The countdown had stalled at 'T' minus 69 seconds when Desiree, the first female ape to go up in space, winked at me slyly and pouted her thick, rubbery lips unmistakably -- the first of many such advances during what would prove to be the longest, and most memorable, space voyage of my career. Martha Simpson, Glastonbury, Connecticut Winning sentence, 1985 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Sheriff Chameleotoptor sighed with an air of weary sadness, and then turned to Doppelgutt and said 'The Senator must really have been on a bender this time -- he left a party in Cleveland, Ohio, at 11:30 last night, and they found his car this morning in the smokestack of a British aircraft carrier in the Formosa Straits.' Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 1985 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest 1984 The lovely woman-child Kaa was mercilessly chained to the cruel post of the warrior-chief Beast, with his barbarian tribe now stacking wood at her nubile feet, when the strong clear voice of the poetic and heroic Handsomas roared, 'Flick your Bic, crisp that chick, and you'll feel my steel through your last meal!' Steven Garman, Pensacola, Florida Winning sentence, 1984 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest Awash with unfocused desire, Everett twisted the lobe of his one remaining ear and felt the presence of somebody else behind him, which caused terror to push through his nervous system like a flash flood roaring down the mid-fork of the Feather River before the completion of the Oroville Dam in 1959. Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 1984 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest 1983 The camel died quite suddenly on the second day, and Selena fretted sullenly and, buffing her already impeccable nails -- not for the first time since the journey begain -- pondered snidely if this would dissolve into a vignette of minor inconveniences like all the other holidays spent with Basil. Gail Cain, San Francisco, California Winning sentence, 1983 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest